You’re staring at the blank screen. Your brain is fried. You can feel a headache coming on.

You know you should be writing, but…

You can’t do this anymore. Your muse is gone. Your well of inspiration is empty. Finished.  Stone-dry.

You’re not just bored or tired. No, no. This is far worse:

Writer’s block.

You try to stop your mind wandering off. You try to stop being distracted by your long to-do-list. You try to write, but you feel like everything you do manage to jot down is… well… terrible.

You know you have to keep going, but how? How can you get back into your writing groove?

The truth:

You need to have some fun.

Not take a break, not go for walk, not get some sleep. All of that is fine and good for a simple case of boredom, but the real cause of writer’s block is you’re holding on too tight.

You need to loosen up. You need to go a little crazy. You need to let the goofy side of you out for a little while and get your creative juices flowing again.

Here are 27 wacky ways to get you started:

1. Talk to an imaginary friend

Whether you’ve 10 readers or 10,000, thinking about them makes writing a post daunting.

So, forget about your readers. Instead, create an imaginary friend.

Your friend is a real fan. He (or she) loves everything you write. He supports everything you do.

Give your imaginary friend a name. Create a little drawing or find a picture of a lookalike. Pin this picture on the wall above your desk.

Instead of writing a blog post, start a conversation with your friend. Or write him a letter. Discuss his dreams and challenges. Help him with whatever he is struggling with.

Be a good friend.

2. Curse like a sailor

Feeling a little frustrated?

Well, let it out.

Before you start writing, curse like a sailor. Get angry. Be emotional.

Write something you’re passionate about. Have a good rant. Don’t worry about going too far.

Good writing isn’t about picking the right words. You need to make your audience feel something. Inspire them.

Writing is emotion.

Sure, you’ll have to edit your first draft. You might even decide to toss it.

Just remember: you can correct mistakes in a passionate piece of writing, but you can’t add emotions to a flat post. So, let it rip.

3. Use a different writing tool

Stuck in a creative rut?

Try using a different writing tool.

Switch from Microsoft Word to Google Docs. Or type your post directly into WordPress.

Switch from a serif to a non-serif font. Or try a script font and change your font color to blue. Or my favorite option: Increase your font size.

It seems silly, but it’s amazing how those small changes can make writing interesting again.

4. Take a short trip

Missing your family? Got a friend you haven’t seen in a while?

Well, let’s go see them.

The key:

Don’t drive.

Instead, hop on a bus, a train, or a plane that takes you there. Then challenge yourself to write a short post before you arrive.

My advice: leave your iPad or laptop at home. Just bring your mobile phone or a pad of paper.

And don’t stop writing until you arrive.

5. Chug some caffeine

Okay. Okay. I know caffeine isn’t good for you. But sometimes you need something to keep going. Don’t waste your fantastic ideas just because you can’t keep awake.

Try this schedule: Set a kitchen time for 25 minutes – or use the focus booster. After 25 minutes of concentrated writing, take a break. Stop even if you feel like finishing a paragraph.

Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee. Start your next 25 minutes and drink your cup of coffee.

Green tea fuels my blog posts. What fuels yours?

6. Stop writing for your readers

Sometimes you just have to write something you want to write. It doesn’t matter whether it suits your blog or not.

Just get on with it. Get it off your chest. Why not?

7. Stop planning your posts

Writing a post outline can speed up your writing. It’s a proven technique.

But it can also suck the joy out of writing.

When you find yourself bored with a particular piece, stop planning. Write whatever comes into your mind. It may all be gibberish, but somewhere you’ll find a precious idea. A thought you can use to create a full post.

8. Embrace messiness

Give your mind time to wander. Get distracted. Embrace serendipity.

Don’t read only blogs about your topic. Don’t just follow industry peers on Twitter. Don’t just read the latest books of thought leaders in your niche.

Go to a random movie. Watch a random channel on TV. Go to a museum. Surprise yourself. Find unexpected metaphors.

The creative process is unpredictable, mysterious, and serendipitous (Malcolm Gladwell). Fuel your creativity by reading outside your niche.

9. Write at a different time

We’re always told about the importance of forming habits and having a fixed writing schedule. Stephen King has a fixed schedule. So does Haruki Murakami. And John Grisham.

Routine habits can be good for creativity. But what if your writing practice gets associated with lack of inspiration, procrastination, and despair?

Break your habit.

Try writing at a different time. Experiment.

10. Write at a different place

Leaving your desk is a proven cure for creative blocks. If you can, take a break and go travelling. If you can’t travel, just drag yourself away from your desk.

Go to a park. Try your local Starbucks or go to the library. Go somewhere that’s not associated with work.

Take your iPad and write wherever your feet take you.

11. Go to a bookstore

If you’re lucky, your bookstore sells coffee and tea. So, make yourself comfortable, find the shelf with books about your niche, and open up your notepad. (Thank you to Sean d’Souza for this idea.)

Look through the table of contents of each book to find blog post ideas. Write them down in your notepad.

Don’t leave the bookstore until you’ve written down 10 ideas for new blog posts. And if you’re enjoying yourself, outline one or two posts in your notepad while finishing your cup of coffee.

Don’t read any further than the table of contents. You should write the content of your blog post yourself (of course).

12. Wash the dishes

Do you get your best ideas in the shower?

Your brain needs to relax before coming up with an insight. Staring at your computer screen might work counterproductive.  Trying to force an insight might actually prevent the insight from appearing.

If you don’t want to waste water by showering three times a day, try other routine tasks: Hoover your room. Fold the laundry. Or wash the dishes. Above all: Relax.

13. Create your own merry-go-round

Done all your household chores? Or just don’t feel like cleaning again?

Try this alternative routine: walk around in circles. Or just pace up and down your room.

Seems silly, I know, but sometimes just the simple act of movement can get you going. Give it shot.

14. Shut down your computer

In his book Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon describes his digital and his analogue desk. The analogue desk is where his work is born. The digital desk is for editing and publishing.

Come on. Shut down your computer. Get a pen and paper. Or pencils, markers, and index cards. Get the feeling that you’re making something. It will inspire you.

15. Browse your photo albums

Sharing tidbits about yourself is a good way to build up a relationship with your readers.

Browse your photo album to find anecdotes to share; and link these stories to your topic. That’s how I came up with the idea of comparing cycling trips with surviving a content marketing journey.

Remind yourself of who you are. Think about the lessons you’ve learnt. Who has inspired your career? How have your travels influenced your thinking?

16. Stop worrying about grammar

Trying to write the perfect post can discourage you from writing.

Stop trying to be perfect.

Accept your first draft may be crappy. Just write as fast as you can. Editing can come later.

17. Goof around on Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Plus

Social media can be a huge time suck. We all know that.

But if you’re stuck and don’t know what to write about, then social media is a rich mine full of precious ideas.

Give yourself half an hour. Interact and ask some questions. Enjoy yourself.  Above all, absorb what others are talking about. You’re bound to find a good idea.

Just be sure to set a timer. You don’t want to get lost out there.

18. Start in the middle

You know you need to draw a reader into your post with a fantastic introduction. That’s true. But trying to write the perfect opening can obstruct your writing process.

Leave your introduction for later. Just get going with your post.

19. Reread your glory posts

Feeling down?

You’ve lost your mojo and doubting your writing skills. It happens to all bloggers at some stage.

Remember that post you’ve written a while back? Your best ever post?

Go back and read the post. Word by word. You see how good you are?

That talent didn’t go anywhere. It’s still inside you.

Sometimes we just need a little reminder.

20. Take a cigarette break

Whoa. A smoke?

Well, you don’t have to light up. But a cigarette break takes about five minutes. And that’s the perfect time to recharge yourself.

The secret to creative productivity is to take breaks while you’re still in a flow. It helps you to get started again after your break.

If you don’t crave a cigarette every so often, good for you! Just set a timer to take a break.

Don’t spend your break tweeting, liking, and plussing. That’s not truly relaxing.

Spend five minutes staring out of the window. Stand outside on your porch or balcony and listen to the traffic. Or watch the clouds float by. As if you’re a lonely smoker.

 21. Listen to the rain

What’s the most relaxing sound?

When you take your “cigarette” break to stare out of the window, switch on the sound of rain.

 22. Be a misfit

Being a blogger isn’t about conforming to the norms.

Don’t feel the pressure to be like your hero bloggers. You have to stand out on the web. You have to be YOU.

Accept you’re a misfit. Just like me. Just like Jon. Just like all other bloggers.

Be yourself. Enjoy yourself. Because your enthusiasm is contagious.

 23. Steal ideas

Is your wish to be original blocking you?

Learn how to steal ideas and make them your own. Snatch post ideas from different writers, but don’t copy outright.

Read widely. Mix ideas from scientists and artists. Plunder quote books.

As Austin Kleon says: “All creative work builds on what came before.”

24. Read health magazines

I won’t lecture you about keeping fit. You know that.

But health magazines are one of the best sources for headline and blog post inspiration.

For instance, the idea to write 36 Quick Fixes to Jumpstart Lifeless Business Blogs came from the headline Food Fixes for Insomnia.

You don’t have to go out and spend money to buy a few magazines. Read covers of Men’s Health Magazine or Women’s Health Magazine online. Or check out the health section on Amazon.

25. Reread your first ever blog post

If you’ve been blogging for six months or more, you’ve written a lot. And you’ve learnt a lot.

Go back to your first few blog posts.

Find one you can rewrite. Add new insights, new arguments, and new examples.

Voila. You got a new post.

26. Create weird challenges

Is writing becoming a chore? Fed up with writing how-to posts?

Create new challenges to have some fun. For instance:

• Introduce a new metaphor in your next post. Or set the bar higher by stipulating your metaphor has to some from sports, or movies, or cooking.
• Estimate your average post length and challenge yourself to write a post in 20% fewer words.
• Try alliteration. Or rhyming. Or onomatopoeias.
• Use the power of three. How often can you introduce three of something?

Tickle your brain to make writing fun.

27. Get your inner critic on your side

The difference between good and great bloggers is your inner critic. As Mike Monday says:

A good producer and a great producer have the same number of ideas – some good, some great. But a great producer will know the difference.

Your inner critic can help you become a better blogger. So how do you get him on side?

Start writing a few practice paragraphs. You’re just warming up. Listen to your inner critic to see how you can improve. Write and edit as you go.

Your inner critic doesn’t need to be your enemy. Make him your friend.

The truth about writer’s block

Writing is hard work. There’s no doubt about that.

But you can make it even harder by accepting writer’s block.

Don’t become a tortured genius.

Choose to get on with writing.

Experiment. Find out what works for you. Write where and when you like. Be as crazy as you like to be.

Come on. Have fun. Let’s try something wacky.

About the Author: Henneke Duistermaat is a marketer and copywriter. She’s on a mission to stamp out gobbledygook and to make dull companies charming. Sign up to receive free copywriting and content marketing tips at Enchanting Marketing.

How about other bloggers? Are they still talking about a particular post years after you published it?

Or is it the opposite?

Visitors just seem to come and go, never commenting, never linking, never sharing, just quickly scanning your posts and then moving on, forgetting about you forever.

If that’s the boat you’re in, I certainly sympathize, but brace yourself, because what I’m about to say will be painful:

You’re not trying hard enough.

Yes, I know those are impossibly high standards. Yes, I know it takes everyone time to learn their craft. Yes, I know there are only a few dozen bloggers in the world who can answer yes to both of those questions.

But if you’ve been blogging for a year or two, and you still can’t answer yes to either of them, then Houston, we have a problem.

Fortunately, it’s a problem we can fix. Let’s start by going back to where it all started.

Visions of Awesomeness

Remember when you were little and your teacher asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Your hand shot up and you answered excitedly, I want to be an astronaut and fly a rocket to the moon! Or I want to be a ballerina and dance The Nutcracker! Or a want to be a fireman and save lives!

You imagined a really grand vision for yourself didn’t you?

You were the great explorer. The famous artist. The hero.

You wanted to be awesome, right?

So that one day you could strike that superhero pose up there on that mountaintop, red cape billowing in the breeze. Basking in the glow of heavenly golden light as the gods shower their praise down upon you for saving the world from mediocrity.

But then something happened…(cue ominous music)

The Curse Of Competence

When you first dreamed of becoming a writer, I’m betting you weren’t longing to become a highly competent copywriter for some big corporation where your work could remain totally anonymous for all time, now did you?

But somewhere along the way you “grew up,” traded in your childish dreams of awesomeness and settled for something…well, a little more realistic: a job that still utilized your “skillset” and allowed you to live close to the dream.

It was just someone else’s dream you were now supporting.

But you did establish yourself a solid reputation.

Competent. Reliable… Forgettable.

The Power Of Unrealistic Expectations

Fortunately for the rest of humanity, there have always been those throughout history who were a little less “realistic” about their own potential. Through every example of their remarkable work they held up a mirror and showed us what we are truly capable of.

See if you can answer the following:

Mark Twain’s classic book, The Adventures of Huckleberry ___________

Created the most famous amusement park in the world around a cast of animated characters we have known and loved for years: ______________

Sculpted The Statue Of David_________________

Is it possible you could have taken more than a half second to answer any of the above? Highly unlikely, right?

They created art that has touched the hearts and souls of countless millions and continues to resonate across the generations.

Art that represents the zenith of our human potential.

Art that is timeless.

Now Let’s Talk About Your Blog

I know, it seems almost scandalous to utter that word in the same breath as Michaelangelo, right?

‘But wait a minute,’ you say.

‘You’re comparing a blog to serious art? Like a fine piece of music or a classic painting or fine literature? Seriously? That’s not even fair.’

‘I just wanted to rant about my overealous devotion to ham radio operators. Isn’t that where this whole blogging thing began? As a way to express myself online? Who said anything about art?’

Exactly!

Want to know why no one cares about your blog?

Ummm, it’s about those ham radio operators. (cue crickets)

Want to be remembered?

Create awesome art.

Of course, there’s one little problem:

That Four Letter “F” Word That’s F^*#ing Up Your Art

Here it comes. The four letter word…(cue the scary music again)

Fear.

More specifically, the fear of rejection.

You either conquer this beast or it will paralyze you.

You think you’ve felt the sting of rejection?

Try this on for size.

Stephen King has sold over 350 million copies of his bone chilling horror stories. But he wasn’t exactly an overnight success.

He began submitting articles to magazines at a very young age to try to make money for his family. And he would post every rejection letter on the wall with a nail. He didn’t actually get published until he was 20.

He writes:

“By the time I was fourteen … the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing.”

Then he wrote Carrie and the rest is history.

Walt Disney was rejected for funding the building of Disneyland more than 500 times! Imagine striking out that many times and still believing in the dream so fiercely that you step up to the plate one more time and knock it out of the park?

Jimi Hendrix toured the country playing gig after gig where no one got his act. They thought he was a freak.

Even after he was introduced to major industry executives who could have made his career right then and there, they still rejected him saying they didn’t like his music and his act was too far out.

Jimi Hendrix had to move all the way across the ocean to London before he finally found his audience.

Think you can hang out like that in total obscurity and keep on keeping on. Carry that weight?

Ah, I see some hands going up out there in the audience. You say you choose to be awesome? You can hang? Excellent. Jon salutes your choice.

Now you have to do the work.

The Rennaissance Will Not Be Televised

You’re smart. You’re savvy (Hey, you’re reading BBT right?). You’ve spent countless hours researching your niche. Learning from the masters in your field by reading their blogs and books. Maybe taking their online courses. Figuring out how you will carve out your own unique niche.

Gold star for doing your homework.

But guess what?

If you want to become someone who creates timeless art you’re going to have to actually get off your ass and start doing something.

Less Squawking, More Painting

At some point you have to conclude your research. Stop reading other people’s work and start considering your own voice. Your art.

That means you have to stop squawking like a parrot, regurgitating and retweeting someone else’s content over and over again under the guise that these are your original thoughts.

Because that other person? The originator of that content? She’s getting all the real recognition.

Authenticity: The Secret Sauce Of Timeless Art

There is no recipe for creating timeless art. Many elements have to come together. But you can say that most timeless art has certain things in common. One of the key elements is authenticity.

Think about those artists from that list above. Their work is instantly recognizable when you see it or hear it or read it. It’s totally authentic.

If you’re ever going to even have a shot at timelessness, you’re going to have to produce an authentic thought of your own.

But what exactly does that mean, authentic?

And where can I find it?

In my studio, there’s a framed poster on my desk that fuels my imagination and speaks directly to this question. It’s from acclaimed filmmaker, Jim Jarmusch.

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”

Listen closely to Jimi Hendrix. You can hear the influences. Buddy Guy, Elmore James, Little Richard, and many more. But no one sounds like Jimi Hendrix. There is only one.

And…ACTION!

Now, you’re going to have to actually do this thing.

That means stare down that blank sheet of paper (OK, your computer screen), take a deep breath and start writing your own very crazy idea that doesn’t sound like any of those other guys.

It will probably suck at first. How will you make it better?

Read this post by Brian Clark.

Is there a message here? Yes, here it is:

YOU HAVE TO WRITE A SHITLOAD IF YOU EVER WANT TO GET GOOD AT IT! YOU HAVE TO DO THE WORK! AND THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS TO GREATNESS!

Wave Your Freak Flag High

The weirder it starts to look (the more it resembles nothing else out there), the more your lizard brain screams that you have to shut this insane idea down now or you’re going to die from exposure to deadly predators.

That’s when you have to dig in deep and keep going, riddled with fear and panic that this idea could absolutely fail.

That’s right. This might not work out for you.

And guess what? It’s OK if it doesn’t. You’ll do it again. Only better the next time.

But only if you…

Ship Or Get Off The Pot.

If you ever want a shot at worldwide recognition you have to begin by putting your work out there where people can find it and interact with it.

And you’re not going to have anyone else to blame for this. You own it. Unbelievable as it may sound, your work could actually succeed too. It might just resonate with an audience.

There’s only one way to find out.

(Yes, that means you actually have to hit the Publish button.)

Do You Want To Change The World?

Think about those artists mentioned above for a minute.

They seem somehow different from you and me, don’t they? Their vision was a bit more grand. You don’t get the impression they spent much time waxing poetic about ham radio operators, do you?

Each of them changed the world in their own unique way.

So maybe the real question to ask here is how about you?

There are maybe a tiny handful of creators out there today who are even bold enough to attempt to elevate blogging to the standard of high art. Here is a short list. You’ll probably have your own favorites (feel free to list them in the comments).

Seth Godin: aka His Sethness

If blogging had a Mount Olympus then Seth Godin would likely play Zeus. Anyone whose name elicits a “Duh?” response for seemingly stating the obvious here, deserves their place on the throne. So let’s move on and talk about some of the demi-gods who are changing the new world.

Hugh MacLeod: The Gary Larson Of The Blogosphere

Hugh MacLeod started out creating brilliant cartoons with witty captions on the back of business cards. He now creates inspirational art for businesses and sells his works online as prints and T-shirts.

Back in 2004, he offered a free download called How To Be Creative, a conglomeration of posts from his blog, Gaping Void. That post ultimately became a bestselling book, Ignore Everybody. It got downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, which showed us a couple of key insights.

1. There were a whole lot of people in the world very interested in how to assert their creativity.

2. Blogging as an artform had the power to influence a global audience.

Jon Morrow: or How To Blog Like Waldo

Jon Morrow is another one of those rare writers who approaches blogging like Emerson approached writing essays. In other words, everything he publishes is written as though it will be viewed through the lens of history.

His insanely popular post, On Dying, Mothers and Fighting For Your Ideas was a blogging tour de force. It’s an article you could have read in The New Yorker or Vanity Fair. It was that well written and pointed to the possibilities of blogging as an artform to be reckoned with.

Leo Babauta: The Yoda Of The Digital Universe

Leo Babauta at Zen Habits has over a million readers. Here’s why: He offers down to earth, straight ahead advice on how to live more simply in a complicated world.

Leo’s writing, like his website, is stark, clean and powerful art. It reminds you of Picasso’s line drawings.

Sonia Simone: The Grand Matriarch Of Online Marketing

Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone has an uncanny ability to see the entire online marketing playing field and spin it into clever stories that inspire and educate all the various tribes at the same time.

She taught us a valuable lesson in a post called Is Your Tribe Holding You Down? That two tribes (the Cool Kids and the IMers) can have totally opposing views on the same subject (online marketing). Yet each has valuable secrets the other could benefit from. It was a bit like West Side Story for online marketing.

From this post, she formed the Third Tribe, an awesome community that melds together the greatest ideas from each of those tribes.

Brian Clark: The Bill Gates Of Content Marketing

Copyblogger founder, Brian Clark disguises a highly successful software company as an insanely helpful blog to copywriters and content marketers. He also wrote a really important little post himself.

His very short and seriously awesome infographic, 10 Steps To Becoming A Better Writer should be required by law to be posted on the walls of every single person who ever chose to call themselves a writer.

In short, it’s the secret to becoming a great writer. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to give away the secret. Click on the link. Then print it.

These are but a few people who are changing the new world today. Who have turned blogging into an artform. Maybe it’s too soon to call their work timeless. Blogging isn’t old enough yet. But we can always recognize awesome art.

And where there’s great art there is commerce.

You Can’t Touch This!

Did you ever wonder why the super rich buy priceless artwork? Why that hedge fund manager who always dreamed of playing music keeps that broken Jimi Hendrix guitar and other memorabilia in a sealed glass case?

It’s not the investment.

Oh sure, their net worth will increase. But the truth is that what they really want is to get a little closer to the dream they could never achieve. To touch the hand of the creator themselves.

Because the real power lies with the artist.

Always remember that.

The Difference Between Timeless And Anonymous

Want to know what really separates those iconic figures from you?

No, it isn’t some God given talent they were born with that you’ll never possess. It’s not the benefit of a privileged family connection that started them off with some advantage you’ll never have.

It’s having the tenacity and perseverance to wake up day after day, year after year sometimes (more often than most would care to admit), staring into the vacuum of uncertainty and rejection.

And then sitting down again to do the hard work of honing your craft to mastery because you believe in yourself and your art fiercely enough to keep pushing forward when there’s no one cheering you on.

The Myth Of Awesomeness

Even after you’ve finally committed yourself to get up there and swing for the fences with your art, the truth is you’re going to strike out a lot. You’ll certainly score some runs. The occasional double. And a lot of foul balls.

The truth is you may only achieve awesomeness once or twice in your whole life if you’re lucky. But if it’s the real genie, that’s all you’ll ever need to do.

That’s the grand slam.

J.K. Rowling could tell you a thing or two about being awesome only once. When she gave birth to Harry Potter.

That’s what we’re after here, right?

Choose Awesomeness. The World Needs You.

People don’t set out to become timeless artists. You have no say in that matter anyway. History alone will decide that.

But you can choose awesomeness.

You can choose to blow people’s minds. You can choose to show us the limitless possibility of our human potential, reflected in your awesome work.

And as strange as it may sound, your crazy idea may be the one story the world has been waiting a lifetime to hear.

And if it feels a bit lonely out there in obscurity right now, know that you’re in good company. Every great artist the world has ever known has stood there before you.

Go ahead. Hit that Publish button and stand proud.

The sun is shining and the wind feels right.

Seems like a great day to fly that red cape!

About the Author: Mark Hermann is a music producer, songwriter and blogger with the occasional whimsy to produce mosaic art. He teaches musicians & other creators how to unearth their inner rock star and deliver the soundtrack to their story. Read more of his stories about how to discover your own personal legend at Rock and Roll Zen. Follow him on Twitter and Google+.

One day, you’re getting a nice little trickle of traffic to a few of your posts. No, it’s nothing major, but it grows with every new post you publish, and you can see Google becoming a major source of traffic for you in the future.

But then it stops.

Poof, every single post and page of your blog disappears from Google. No warning, no alarm bells, nothing. You’re just gone, like you never even existed.

And the worst part?

You don’t even know why. It just feels like the biggest, baddest bully on the Internet decided to knock the crap out of you, leaving you whimpering and bleeding, wondering what on earth you did wrong.

It happens all the time. I know, because it happened to me.

How I Got Blacklisted by Google

About seven years ago, my first blog, Real Estate Answered, was blacklisted by Google.

One day, I was on the first page for the term “real estate investment,” raking in a few hundred visitors per day, and the next, my site was just gone. I could still access it by typing in the URL, but the steady stream of search traffic stopped. Completely.

Knowing what I know now, I totally deserved it, but at the time, I felt like a mugging victim. I’d just spent three months and hundreds of hours writing sixtysomething articles on real estate investing, but Google erased all that effort in a heartbeat.

Why?

Well, I can’t know for sure, but it was probably because I was paying guys in the Philippines to submit my site to a bunch of shoddy link directories. I had also started selling text links on my site – another big no-no.

At the time, I didn’t know any better. I thought everything I was doing was totally legitimate.

With Google though, ignorance is no excuse. You break the rules, you pay the consequences. End of story.

That’s why it’s so important to learn what the rules are.

The Truth about How Google Works

It’s evolving. All the time.

Every day, they tweak their algorithms to filter out spammers. Every year or two, they also roll out major updates that cause huge shifts in search engine rankings for nearly everyone on the web.

The result?

What works today may not work tomorrow. In fact, it might even hurt you.

Once upon a time, Google didn’t penalize people for making mistakes. They would withhold benefits, yes, but they wouldn’t actually reduce your ranking or make you disappear.

Now, they’re much more punitive. Even if you don’t make a big enough mistake to get yourself blacklisted, you can still see your search engine results drop overnight if you do something wrong, potentially by dozens of pages.

What, exactly, do they punish you for?

Well, the list is ever-changing, but here are the six sins most likely to land you on their naughty list:

Sin #1: Buying Links

Ever noticed ads from so called SEO firms promising you hundreds of links and a first page ranking for some paltry fee?

Well, ignore them. Here’s why:

Almost without fail, the links are from spammy, disreputable sites and social networking accounts. Getting a link from them is kind of like going to a job interview with a letter of recommendation from a well-known crack dealer. It hurts you, not helps you.

And it doesn’t matter how smart they are. Some of these companies claim they’ll never be found out by Google, because all of the spammy links are pointing to an intermediary page, creating a “link wheel” or “link pyramid.” Supposedly, that’s supposed to protect you.

It might even work… for a while. The problem is, remember how I said Google is always evolving? Even if they don’t catch you today, they are guaranteed to catch you at some point in the future. They always have.

The best policy?

Don’t buy (or sell) links. Period.

Sin #2: Joining the Wrong Link Directories

When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:

- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.

- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.

- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url.

Matt Cutts, on behalf of Google

Link directories are, by far, one of the most misunderstood parts of SEO

Once upon a time, they were an essential piece of any campaign to launch a new site. You could submit your blog to DMOZ.org and a few industry-specific link directories, and you get a quick boost in your search rankings.

And it makes sense, right? If your blog is about surfing, then it makes sense to be included in all the link directories about surfing.

Well… here’s the problem:

Google looks at the web as consisting of “neighborhoods.” If your blog is frequently mentioned next to trusted, authority sites, you’re part of a “good neighborhood.” If all your links come from pages linking to thousands of junky sites, on the other hand, you’re part of a “bad neighborhood.”

Which one do you think link directories are?

A bad one, right? Because anyone can submit their site, most link directories become nothing more than a repository for junk. Even if your blog is totally legitimate, you’re guilty by association.

Now, that’s not to imply all link directories are bad. If you’re submitting your blog to a highly targeted directory that’s reviewed by an actual human being to make sure all of the sites listed are top-notch, you might still get some benefit from it, because you’re surrounded by other valuable sites.

Like in life, you are who you hang out with.

Sin #3: Article Marketing

Ever heard of article marketing?

It was all the rage back around 2008. The idea is you could write an article, “spin” multiple versions of it, making small adjustments to the wording, and then submit those versions to different websites that collect free articles in exchange for a link back to your site.

And it used to work. Back then, quite a few search results were dominated by sites like E-Zine Articles and Article Base.

Not so much anymore. Yes, lots of people still do article marketing, but it’s a dying technique. Here’s why:

Remember how I said Google is always getting smarter?

Well, the reason article marketing was so popular is you could take one of your blog posts, spin it into five different variations, and get a few dozen links back to the post. Google would see the different variations as totally unique articles, meaning no duplicate content penalty.

Over the years though, their algorithm has gotten better and better at sniffing out articles with small variations. Articles that used to rank for years are now plummeting, because Google recognizes them for what they are: spam.

That’s not to imply writing for other sites is a bad idea. Guest blogging, in particular, is one of the most effective ways of building a popular blog. That’s because you’re writing unique content for trusted site, surrounded by dozens of other authorities.

Article marketing, on the other hand, is all about trying to fool Google by duplicating content for suspicious sites filled with articles written by nobodies. Once again, you’re guilty by association.

Sin #4: Keyword Stuffing

“Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking.” -Google

Let’s get technical for a moment.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “keyword stuffing” means using a keyword over and over again in your content in the hopes that it’ll get you a better ranking. For example, let’s say you want to rank for “chocolate chip cookies.” This is what keyword stuffing would look like:

“Chocolate chip cookies are so delicious! I’m going to teach you my grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe for making the best chocolate chip cookies you’ve ever tasted. The chocolate chip cookie recipe makes two dozen chocolate chip cookies.”

The whole article blog post would continue like that, using the keyword “chocolate chip cookies” dozens or even hundreds of times. Never mind the language is so unnatural it’s almost unreadable. It’s optimized, baby!

It’s also dumb. Here’s why:

Keyword density is only a tiny part of Google’s algorithm. Nobody knows for sure how much, but from what I’ve seen, I would guess it’s less than 5%. Next to the more important factors like domain authority and trusted links, it’s almost completely irrelevant.

And if you take it too far, it can hurt you.

Google’s top concern is the user experience. If all the articles people find are stuffed with keywords, no one will want to read them, and everyone will stop using Google to search the web. They’ll never allow it, and some SEO experts believe they actively penalize it.

But let’s say they don’t. Even if you escape totally unscathed, who do you think is going the link to content like that? Nobody with any authority. And since links are a much more important part of the algorithm, you’re dooming yourself to get ignored forever.

My advice?

Don’t think about keywords at all for the first year of your blog. Just focus on publishing jaw-dropping content and getting as many links as you can. Then, once your blog has some authority, go back and tweak the keywords in your most popular posts without making them sound even the slightest bit unnatural.

Yes, you might lose some opportunities, but your chances of building an authority site are much, much higher. Trust me.

Sin #5: Unnatural Anchor Text

This is another example of people taking a tiny piece of Google’s algorithm way too far.

If you’re not familiar with the term “anchor text,” it refers to the text inside of a link. So, the anchor text in this sentence is “anchor text.”

When Google is deciding what terms to rank your pages for, the anchor text is one of the places it looks for clues. If a bunch of people are linking to one of your posts with “funny fart jokes” as the anchor text, for example, there’s a good chance the post is about funny fart jokes.

So, surprise, surprise, people try to game the system. They build links using some of the disreputable techniques above, and they use the terms they want to rank for as the anchor text, hoping it’ll increase their chances of getting ranked.

But how natural does that look?

Not everyone is going to use the exact same anchor text when they link to you. Some of the links you get might have a shorter anchor text like “jokes,” related phrases like “made me laugh,” or even just a plain URL with no anchor text at all.

By using the same anchor text in all your links, you’re basically telling Google that you’re trying to game the system. And chances are, you’ll get penalized at some point.

Sin #6: Broken Links

“Check for broken links and correct HTML.” -Google

And last but not least, the sneakiest of them all: broken links.

Over time, pretty much all bloggers will accumulate some links that no longer work. Other sites die, move, and restructure all the time, making the page you originally linked to disappear.

The question is, if broken links are so natural, why does Google penalize you for them?

Well, think about it from their perspective:

Which page is likely more up-to-date: one with five broken links or one with zero? Also, which page provides a better user experience?

The current one, of course. So, all other factors being equal, a page with no broken links is likely to outrank a page with broken links.

But don’t freak out, because all other factors are almost never equal. Like a lot of the other algorithm variables we talk about here, broken links are a small one.

Still, it’s a sin that’s easy to atone for. Once or twice a year, pop into Google Webmaster Tools  and correct all of the broken links it gives you. You might notice a small bump in the rankings of some of your pages.

Feeling Worried Yet?

After reading all this, you might feel like you’re walking across a field of landmines, hoping you don’t step on an invisible deathtrap and get yourself blown up. You probably never knew SEO could be so dangerous.

The good news, though?

It doesn’t have to be. For the most part, the people who get in trouble with Google are either SEO geeks who are intentionally pressing their luck or unsuspecting innocents who get advice from the wrong person.

If you know nothing about SEO, and you’re doing nothing more than publishing awesome content and building relationships with your readers, you’re probably safe. In fact, that’s a good mindset for all bloggers, in my opinion. At least in the beginning.

Instead of trying to figure out how to manipulate the Google algorithm for better rankings, just create content that deserves to be on the first page, promote the hell out of it, and wait for Google to catch up. Their goal, after all, is to move the best stuff to the top of the pile.

In that respect, the real, supersecret, behind-the-scenes strategy for getting your blog ranked on the first page of Google doesn’t have anything to do with link pyramids or keyword density or any of the rest of that complicated nonsense. It’s just three simple steps:

1. Create jaw-dropping content
2. Get influencers talking about it
3. Wait for Google to catch up

Oversimplified?

Maybe, but it’s exactly what Google wants you to do.

So why do anything else?

About the Author: Jon Morrow has asked repeatedly to be called “His Royal Awesomeness,” but no one listens to him. So, he settles for CEO of Boost Blog Traffic, LLC. Poor man.

It works for cats. Collectively, the cat videos on YouTube are more popular than… well… everything.

And it’s totally not fair, right?

Nothing is more frustrating than spending hours writing a thoughtful post, only to get ignored because everyone is too busy watching a cat play the keyboard. And yet, it happens all the time.

Is it wrong to want to actually teach people something? Is all that hard work creating educational content just a waste of time?

Well, I don’t think so. If I did, I wouldn’t be writing this post.

At the same time though, I believe all the cat videos are trying to teach us a very important lesson:

There’s a Place for Mindless Content

Think about it.

After a long day at work, solving problems and stomping out fires and juggling hundreds of different tasks, do you really want to come home and watch a documentary?

Of course not. Your brain is fried.

Well, many of your readers feel the same way. For them, the Internet isn’t a fount of knowledge; it’s something they tinker with before they go to bed. A cat video makes them laugh for a few minutes, and then they go to sleep.

Does that mean educational content is worthless?

No. It just means you have to consider people’s mental state.

Sometimes we want long posts that give us dozens of ideas and really make us think. Other times, we just want to watch stupid cat videos.

The best blogs do both. If you look at the blogs that really get a lot of traffic, some of the posts are fun, and some are there to make people think.

The problem?

You can find lots of smart advice on how to create great educational content, but that’s only half the equation. If you want to build a popular blog, you need to learn how to be mindless too.

And who better to teach us than cats themselves?

Here are their five most powerful lessons for creating blissfully mindless content:

Lesson #1: You Have to Be Easy to like

Even if you’re not a cat person, you can’t deny the appeal of big dew drop eyes and fluffy tails. (If you can, you’re obviously a cyborg.)

Cats have universal appeal that transcend cultural barriers, even language. That’s what makes them so popular.

How does that apply to you?

The truth is, blogging is the world’s biggest and most competitive popularity contest. People don’t read your blog just because you publish useful content. They read because they like you.

So, insert little tidbits about yourself into your posts. When your readers can relate to you, they’re more likely to comment and share your posts with others.

Lesson #2: It’s All About the Cat, Not the Cat Owner

Of course, you can also overdo it.

It’s OK to talk about yourself once in a while, but you need to keep your blog focused on the ones that matter most — your readers. Whenever you tell a story about yourself, wrap it inside a larger lesson that benefits the reader.

Here’s why: your readers are like cats.

They care about you, yes, but only as it relates to themselves. You’re there to serve the cat (or the reader), not the other way around.

And that’s a good thing. I think most of us become bloggers because deep down, we want to help people. There’s a need within us to offer something greater for the world.

We believe that our ideas have value and by offering up this value, we can help someone. They will read our blog and say, “Wow, I never thought of it that way.”

The secret to getting that kind of response?

Care about what your audience wants more than you care about what you want to say.

Lesson #3: Offer a Clear Benefit

If you watch a cat video, you know you’re going to get one of three things:

Cuteness overload, a cat being confused, or a cat completely freaking out. Regardless of exactly what they’re doing, it’s fun to watch, and you know exactly the experience you’re going to have.

Can readers say the same thing about your posts? Or are the benefits somewhat… murky?

Ideally, you want every post to offer an immediate and obvious reason to keep reading. It also needs to be a reason that’s relevant to your audience.

For example, Jon Morrow likes to read. A lot. He doesn’t write book reviews on here because he knows when you do come here, it’s not to learn about books.

If he does mention a book, it’s all in context. He’ll talk to you about writing lessons he’s learned from Stephen King.

The secret?

He knows what his readers want to achieve (i.e., becoming a better writer). He also makes sure you know exactly what the post is going to help you do when you read it.

Sounds like a simple thing, I know, but a lack of clarity is one of the major reasons why most bloggers don’t get more traffic. People come to their site, look around for a few seconds, and can’t figure out exactly how the site benefits them. So they leave, and they never come back.

Don’t let that happen to you.

Lesson #4: Make your visitors feel something

When you watch to cat video, you feel something. Always.

Maybe you laugh. Maybe you get the warm and fuzzies. Maybe somebody does something to the cat that makes you angry.

The stronger the emotion, the more popular the video is too. That’s because people come back to it again and again to get their “feeling fix,” and they also share it with their friends.

You need to do the same thing with your blog posts.

When you sit down to write, don’t just choose a topic. Choose an emotion. Decide in advance how you want readers to feel when they finish the post.

Do that, and people will be a lot more likely to come back to your blog. Not only because of what you teach them, but also because of how you make them feel.

Lesson #5: Don’t Be Afraid to Look Silly

Cats are really silly, but in an evil genius sort of way. It’s this complexity that makes people either love or hate them, but none of us can turn away when they’re chasing a laser pointer into a wall.

That’s why it’s important to be silly once in a while. People get tired of being lectured by know-it-alls. Sometimes, they just want someone they can laugh and hang out with.

So, be that person. Tell a joke, post a funny picture, or make a video of yourself doing something crazy.

You might worry that it’ll diminish your authority, but it won’t. People like to see their leaders having fun. Just look at all the politicians who go on comedy shows.

The bottom line?

Your Job Isn’t to Educate the World

Somewhere along the way, bloggers got the idea that our job is to educate the world. Day in and day out, we have to publish content that teaches people things and makes them think.

But it’s not true.

Our real job is making people happy.

It doesn’t matter how. Give them a useful tip, make them laugh, tell them an inspiring story, whatever. Just make sure they leave your blog happier than they came.

Educational content is one way to do that, sure, but it’s just one tool in an entire toolbox of techniques available to you. Why not use them all?

Cats do. Maybe they’re smarter than us after all.

About the Author: Marie Rotter helps businesses discover marketing strategies that attract customers without losing their minds. You can find her steps to better marketing at http://zenofentrepreneurship.com.

Southern Gentleman (John Worsham): “It was a bullet, wasn’t it?”
Forrest: “A bullet?”
Southern Gentleman: “That jumped up and bit you.”
Forrest: “Oh. Yes, sir. Bit me directly in the but-tocks.”

BANG.

One moment, you’re checking your email or surfing the web or browsing through the aisles of Barnes & Noble, minding your own business, doing nobody any harm, and that’s when it happens…

You read something that jumps up and bites you in the buttocks.

It’s so beautifully written, so painfully true, you can’t help feeling like you just got shot. No, it’s not a physical wound, but you can feel the ideas kicking around inside you, and you know somehow that they’ll stay with you for a very long time.

Maybe you even wonder how you can write like that yourself. So few can.

With blogging in particular, most writing is pitiful, full of shallow ideas and poorly told stories. The posts are hardly memorable, much less capable of making readers feel like they just took a physical blow.

The good news is Forrest Gump is here to help. Here are some of the best lines from the movie, along with advice on exactly how you can up your game:

Forrest Gump: “Hello. I’m Forrest… Forrest Gump.”
Army Bus Driver: “Nobody gives a horse’s shit who you are, pus ball! You’re not even a low-life, scum-sucking maggot!”

And the truth is, neither are we.

Yes, I know you have the world’s greatest untold story. Yes, I know you’re aching to tell it. Yes, I know it’ll turn readers into blubbering, sobbing messes of emotion.

But restrain yourself for a while.

There are times and places for stories, it’s true. I’ve even told mine once or twice (okay, three times).

I waited years, though. Not because it took me that long to tell the tale, but because that’s how long it took me to earn it.

Before your readers care about you, first they have to know how much you care about them.

Their problems. Their dreams. Their questions.

Not yours. At least, not in the beginning.

An audience is only ready to hear your story when they feel you really and truly have heard theirs. Never before.

Jenny: “Do you have a dream, Forrest, about who you’re going to be?”
Forrest: “Aren’t I going to be me?”

Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to stick your personality in a box and stuff it in long-term storage. Lordy, no.

Any great writer’s personality bleeds into the page. There’s a special quality to their words, sentences, and paragraphs that’s as unique to them as a fingerprint.

Part of your job as a beginning writer is to find your own writing fingerprint. You were born with it, just as much as you were born with arms and toes and fingernails.

And the journey to find it, why, that’s one of the greatest journeys there is.

Truly dedicated writers don’t just explore topics and ideas and audiences, looking for the right match. They explore voices too, saying things this way and that until they find the voice that bubbles up right from their soul.

You can find that voice. It’s inside you.

You just need the courage to express it.

Drill Sergeant: “GUMP! What’s your sole purpose in this army?”
Gump: “To do whatever you tell me, Drill Sergeant?”
Drill Sergeant: “Goddammit Gump, you’re a goddamn genius. That’s the most outstanding answer I’ve ever heard. You must have a goddamn IQ of 160! You’re goddamn gifted, Private Gump!”

The best way to find that courage?

Get a mentor.

Too many writers struggle in solitude, fumbling to learn how to write all on their own. It’s a horrible mistake, not only because our craft is devilishly complicated, but because the anxiety of not knowing whether you’re good enough can rip you apart inside.

A mentor can tell you. A mentor can teach you. A mentor can make you a great writer decades sooner than you could have become one on your own.

So, where do you find one?

Well, you don’t. Mentors aren’t found. They’re bought.

In the olden days, parents would pay master craftsman to take their child in as an apprentice. Thousands of years later, it’s still largely the same. The only difference is you pay the master, in most cases, not your parents.

So, find yourself a good writing teacher and pay them to teach you. If you’re serious about writing, it’s the best investment you could possibly make.

(PS: You can find one of my mentorship programs here.)

 Forrest: “Now Bubba told me everything he knew about shrimping, but you know what I found out? Shrimping is tough.”

The harsh truth, though?

Yes, a mentor is a must, but there are also certain ephemeral lessons you can learn only by your lonesome. And it’s tough. Just as tough as shrimping, I would guess.

For example, deciding what to write. A mentor can teach you how to organize sentences, express your ideas, and even deal with your inhibitions, but tell you what to say? Sorry. Nobody can decide that but you.

The bad news is the decision of what to say is maybe even more important than knowing how to say it.

In my years as a teacher, I’ve taught more than 1,000 bushytailed bloggers how to write, and I like to think I’ve made all of them better, but there’s a certain percentage of them that just can’t help writing about the dumbest things. Oh, they write it well, but it’s a topic no one cares about, so it does nobody any good.

On the flip side, there are also bloggers who write about topics the world is so desperate to learn more about they can’t help become popular. When they sign up for one of my courses, I just take away the rough edges. Nothing more, really.

Which camp do you fall into?

Well, I don’t know, but I believe it’s a choice. And it’s one only you can make.

Lt. Dan: “They gave you the congressional Medal of Honor.”
Forrest: “Yes, sir. They surely did.”
Lt. Dan: “They gave you, an imbecile, a moron who goes on television and makes a fool out of himself in front of the whole damn country, the congressional Medal of Honor.”
Forrest: “Yes, sir.”
Lt. Dan: “Well, that… that’s just perfect!”

The good news?

Not all your decisions have to be right. In fact, you might as well prepare yourself – a fair percentage of what you write will be shockingly stupid, and when you publish it, you’ll look like a fool in front of everyone.

But therein lies a precious secret:

The difference between a great writer and a merely good one is being willing to look like a fool. You have to be fearless, writing not with a squeak, but with a roar.

That’s what readers remember. That’s what readers reward.

Forrest: “Sorry I had a fight in the middle of your Black Panther party.”

How, exactly, do you write with a roar?

Well, you can start by standing up to the bad guys. Not just obvious ones like serial killers and rapists and drug dealers, but every day baddies like mean-spirited critics, moneygrubbing gurus, and brainless bloggers.

Don’t do it in anger. Don’t call anyone names. Don’t be self-righteous.

In fact, be the opposite. Be humble, maybe even a little apologetic for having to cause a commotion, but also unquestionably firm in your convictions and unwilling to back down.

A lot of times, you’ll be all alone. You might even be surrounded by a whole industry of people who vehemently disagree with you.

But you’ll also get emails from people who are grateful for someone saying something. Seeing your courage, a few other brave souls might even speak up and publicly agree with you.

Your job is to be that spark, to be the lone voice of dissent willing to take a stand. A small but very loyal group of people will love you for it.

Lt. Dan: “Come on! You call this a storm? Blow, you son of a bitch, blow! It’s time for a showdown! You and me! I’m right here! Come and get me! Ha ha! Ha ha! You’ll never sink… this… boat! Ha ha ha ha!”

And most of all?

Never, ever give up.

Yes, you can make adjustments. Yes, you can change directions. Yes, you can even start over, if you have to.

But don’t quit. Not ever.

Not when you’re struggling to pay the bills. Not when your family thinks you’re crazy. Not when everyone ignores your work. Not when publishers reject you. Not when you feel like God is urging you to do something else.

It will be tempting, believe me. I thought about quitting lots of times. At the end of the day though, here’s the simple truth:

If you’re a writer, you write. Every day. For life.

That’s how you get good. That’s how you get respect. That’s how you build an audience.

And Forrest Gump?

If you remember, Jenny told him to run. You know, “Run, Forrest, run!”

Well, I’m changing that up a bit. For us, the motto is “Write, writer, write!”

Do that, and everything else will take care of itself. Just you watch and see.

About the Author: Jon Morrow has asked repeatedly to be called “His Royal Awesomeness,” but no one listens to him. So, he settles for CEO of Boost Blog Traffic, LLC. Poor man.

Let me guess…

You spend hours on Twitter and Facebook “working,” only to wonder later if you really accomplished anything.

You comment on the blogs of bigwig bloggers, telling yourself you’re “networking,” nevermind that none of those comments actually lead to anything.

You have a growing collection of books and courses promising to teach you all the secrets in the universe, but they sit in that “to be read” folder collecting dust.

In the back of your mind, you know you can do better. Technically, you even know what to do.

But something inside you refuses to let you, and every day you struggle with whether or not you should just give up or find some other shortcut.

You know how I know this?

Because I’m you.

The conversation that saved my life

“You are the dumbest smart marketer I know.”

All I could do was sit there, dumbfounded, staring at my monitor, blinking like a moron. Derek Halpern, a friend and a marketer I respect, just called me out, and I had nowhere to hide.

“I like you, which is why I’m telling you this. Stop Doing Dumb Things.”

I tried telling him about how my website was no longer what it needed to be. I tried telling him I knew I was “a little backwards” at the moment, but I would soon get it sorted out. I tried telling him I was working on a product, and once I released it, it would change everything.

“Those are nothing but excuses,” he said. “Just wanted to point that out, that you’re creating bullshit reasons not to grow your email list.”

Busted.

The life and times of a professional blog saboteur

After the pants incident, I faced two choices:

Find a job in the middle of an economic crisis or do what I knew I was born to do.

Naturally, I picked the latter.

For months, I downloaded online marketing to my brain. I absorbed so much information, I’d wake up every morning bleary eyed, head on the keyboard, cheek deep in a puddle of drool.

It paid off, though.

Before long, not only did I start to really understand what was going on, but I used my background in entertainment industry to draw parallels between character building and the internet, forming my own unique marketing philosophy. A year later, I’d gone from just barely scraping by to building a sustainable income.

But you know what?

This was the worst thing that could’ve happened

I got comfortable. I stopped exploring.

I gave money to others for spoon feeding me their perspective. I’d buy training, put it into action, see it work, help a few people out, then…stop. I’d buy more training, see it work, then move on to the next shiny thing.

It was disastrous. In just a few years, I switched my “authority” position eight times, each time believing it was the secret to finally setting me apart.

Good luck to regular readers trying to keep up. As soon as you started to think you figured out who I am, poof, I turned around and became someone else entirely.

Haha! No commitment to a career path rulez!

*Ahem* Ok, so why? Why would anyone do this to themselves or their audience?

Have I been afraid of success? Afraid to put the work in? Am I just being lazy?

As much as I hate to admit it, I think it’s fear of success.

That and arrogance.

How to stop holding yourself back

Truth is, when you know your work is great, but you don’t have the recognition you deserve, you’re arrogant too.

You don’t have to walk with your nose high to be arrogant. I mean, isn’t it arrogant to think just because you’ve created something good, you deserve to be recognized?

This was a hard one for me, but eventually I realized doing good work is only the first step.

Less talented people will always get more recognition when they hustle harder to get their name out.

You can’t rely on, nor should you expect, your readers to do your promotion. It’s not their job to make sure you’re seen.

Instead, adopt mindsets and systems to improve your output and expand your reach.

And stop doing silly things. Here are some of the biggest offenders:

1. Not taking your blog seriously

“I’ve got client work to do.” “I have to write for this other website.” “I’ll write when I’m a little less tired.”

I tell myself these things all the time.

But if you want to be successful, you have to realize they’re just excuses. They’re reasonable, yes, but they’re excuses nonetheless.

The reality is successful bloggers take their blog just as seriously as their day job. It’s that important.

Yes, you have to eat and sleep, or you’ll keel over dead, but you don’t have to watch TV for hours every night, check your email every five minutes or get sucked into the social media vortex. So, stop screwing around with all that stuff. I’m serious.

You HAVE TO be the first person to respect your blog. If you don’t, how can you expect others to respect it too?

This means spending long, sweaty hours at the anvil banging out headlines, refining your storytelling skills, and magnetizing your calls to action.

It means doing technical stuff like internal linking structure, information architecture, and opt-in form placement.

It means stalking your competition to near obsession, so you can predict their every move, and beat them at their own game.

Is it a lot of work? You bet your ass it is.

But it’s the only way.

2. Thinking you can work without a schedule

When I was producing “Inside The Mind” my assistant (read: friend) and I spent 95 hours every week to produce a 4-6 minute video.

On top of that, I maintained two full time clients, and a writing gig that required 1,000-2,000 words every single week, for 22 weeks.

What I learned? Your schedule is your only path to freedom.

For me, there are two schedules:

The Writing Schedule

The writing schedule is all about the creation process.

When your workload increases, saying you’ll create “when you feel like it” is the same as saying “I want to never have time for anything please.”

Instead, block out times for you to work on your different writing projects, and set deadlines. The point of a writing schedule is to create as much as possible in the time you allow yourself. You’re won’t always be satisfied, but the only way to polish an idea is to pull it from your brain and put it on the page, no matter how much it writhes, kicks, spits and swears at you.

Ideally, you want to get into the habit of writing a set amount of words every day.

Learn your rhythms. Write when you’re passionate. Edit when you’re critical.

No doubt, you’ll be walking through spider webs at first. But underneath it all you’re training yourself to be a helluva good writer.

The Publishing Schedule

Just because you write every day doesn’t mean you have to publish every day.

The whole point of the writing schedule is for you to create a volume of work while refining your skills.

Your publishing schedule curates the best work to your blog.  Some blogs are only publishing only one or two extremely useful articles a month on their own blog.

When you take your writing seriously, and you put yourself on a schedule, you don’t have any choice but to produce a large enough volume of work that’ll grab people’s attention.

Not everything has to make the final cut to your blog, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used somewhere else. And if you commit to publishing on a schedule, both on and off your blog, people will notice.

3. Trying to make everything perfect

Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing was able to write 40 posts, more than 80 guest posts, two books, and a lot of other content, all in a single year (2011).

Derek Halpern’s Social Triggers grew from 0-17,000 subscribers in 11 months. He’s managed to get to A-List status in what seems like a crazy short amount of time.

Heck, Boost Blog Traffic had 13,000 subscribers before the site even launched.

While this sounds Herculean, the truth is these guys have the same 24 hours in a day you do. The difference between them and you, is while you’re perfecting your one piece, they’re moving on to the next opportunity.

Set a goal for how long you’ll dedicate to a single article.

If you plan on writing one article a week, only spend a week on it, don’t go over. If your limit is 3 days/article, make it the best it can be in 3 days time, then move on.

Even if you’re only writing one article a week, by the end of the year you’d still have 52 articles. (if you’re publishing on your own blog once a month, you’d have 40 articles left over to publish in other places.)

4. Reinventing the wheel

Originality is a Sin.

There’s a reason why every Cosmopolitan’s headline looks exactly the same.Those headline templates sell.

There’s a reason that every popular blog within a niche formats their posts similarly. It’s easier to read.

There’s a reason why shows like CSI and House stay on the air. Every episode follows a proven structure, making them easy to follow and keeping attention between commercial breaks.

Does that mean you have to be a copycat?

No. Don’t think for a second that borrowing someone else’s format means you skimp on individuality.

For example, imagine your content is an apartment. The floorplan might be the same as every other apartment in the building, but you change the furniture, paint, and decor to make it your own.

Content works the same way. You take the framework and adapt it to your own individual style.

The result?

Less guesswork. Faster content creation. More traffic.

Speaking of traffic…

5. Promoting your blog only sporadically

Something I’ve learned by taking Jon’s guest blogging program is if you want to grow your audience, guest blogging works.

With one caveat:

You must be consistent. (and guest blog like a professional)

Promoting your blog is a marathon, not a sprint. One good guest post every few months will not sustain you.

Our attention spans are too short. (Honestly, can you point me to an article you read a month ago?)

To grow your blog, you need regular support from other bloggers, on a steady basis. That means writing lots of guest posts.

Don’t limit yourself to posting only on A-List blogs either. Look to some of the other B and C list blogs too.

Hang with the cool kids, but form your own posse. That’s how all of the popular blogs I can think of got to where they are, and that’s how you can do it too.

The bottom line?

Do something

You know, reading this is well and good, but if you really want a popular blog, you have to earn it.

What’s painful for me right now is reflecting on the past 3 years and thinking, “I haven’t done enough.”

I know I’ve done great work, but I’ve been afraid to share it. If you’ve read this far, chances are, you feel the same way.

It’s not that I’m afraid of being told that I’m wrong or stupid. No it’s much worse that that.

I’m terrified of being center field, stripped naked, with the faceless crowd laughing in one booming, disjointed voice.

But you know what’s even more terrifying?

Regret.

Knowing I’ll wake up tomorrow and 20 years will have passed – and I know I didn’t do squat.

Don’t let this happen.

You want to be successful? It has to be a choice.

So, let’s make a pledge. Repeat after me:

From now on, my fears will not rule me.  I will be disciplined. My fears will not bully me into doing silly things.

The rest is up to you.

About The Author- Tommy Walker sabotaged his career for too long and now he’s making up for lost time. He’s in pre-pre-production for Season 2 of his series “Inside The Mind” and is hosting “The Mindfire Chats” a live-stream that mashes up expert panelists from various fields to discuss the core principles of online marketing. If you’re interested in learning more about his work, start here.

We’ve all been told to let the words flow loose and easy and free, but instead, we stiffen up like a British banker before his annual rectal exam.

It feels horrible too. Instead of enjoying writing like we’re supposed to, we end up gritting our teeth through the entire experience, knowing something just ain’t right but feeling so uncomfortable that we can’t help sounding like a robot.

The good news is that deliverance is at hand. Like any good friend, I hereby pronounce myself ready to pry said stick out of your posterior, curing you of robotitus once and for all.

Let us begin.

The painful truth about why you can’t be yourself

It’s because you’re inhibited, dearie.

All of us are, to one degree or another, and thank God. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we acted on every impulse to pass through our little heathen brains?

Why, it would be a mess. People would be fornicating in church, passing out drunk in the wine aisle of the grocery store, murdering their children for failing to take out the garbage, and God only knows what else.

To protect ourselves from such ill-advised behavior, we all learn during childhood that there are Angels and Demons within all of us, and if we are to survive, we must encourage the former and discourage the latter. Or else.

But many of us take it too far

Instead of just ignoring our worst impulses, we ruthlessly stomp on any impulse at all. We go from being a thinking, feeling human being to becoming a robot, mindlessly following the script society gives us for “appropriate behavior.”

And the bad news?

Good writing isn’t in the script. Yes, you can write a set of instructions or a report about what happened, but there won’t be any life to it. It’ll just be information, pure and simple and boring.

If you want to make your writing interesting, you have to embrace the mess. You have to find the courage to look inside yourself and discover what you really think. You also have to feel, not just little blips of emotion, but buckets of it, drowning you in their intensity and power.

The good news is, just as you trained yourself to suppress those thoughts and emotions, you can also train yourself to unsuppress them. Not totally, mind you, to where you end up stabbing your boss with a letter opener, but enough to get them out onto the page.

Here are some exercises to get you started:

Exercise #1: Tell your mother to go to hell

Credit for this one goes to the legendary copywriter Gary Halbert.

Here’s what you do:

Write a letter to your mother explaining all the ways she has ruined your life. Call her names, describe her flaws in vicious detail, and be so downright hurtful you can imagine her clutching her heart and falling over dead.

And then delete it, burn it, or otherwise obliterate it from existence. Whatever you do, do NOT mail the evil thing.

The goal of this exercise isn’t to hurt your mother, but to quiet her voice within you. Most of us learned right and wrong from our mothers, and fear of their disapproval keeps us from ever being truly honest.

So, let her have it (figuratively speaking). You’ll be shocked at how much it helps your writing.

Exercise #2: Give a stranger an honest compliment

Not all inhibitions are of the nasty variety. You can be just as uptight about being nice to people.

If you doubt me, give this a try:

Go up to a complete stranger and pay them an honest compliment. Not the oh-you-look-nice-today lame assery most people spout, but a spontaneous gesture of appreciation, derived from real emotion.

If you see a car you’ve always wanted to have, for example, don’t walk up to the owner and say “nice car.” Go to them with wide eyes and a pounding heart and inform them they have the bitchinest ride in the universe.

See what I’m talking about?

Real emotion. Real expression. Real connection.

With a complete stranger.

If you can’t do it in person, it’s mighty hard to do it in print.

Exercise #3: Write a steamy sex scene

Were you brought up to believe sex is a private thing? Whatever people do behind closed doors and all that jazz?

Yeah, me too, but here’s the deal:

Our job as writers is to say the things other people are unable or unwilling to say. Sometimes that means being brutally honest, but more often, it means touching the taboo – subjects like cowardice, greed, jealousy, hate, and yes, sex.

Instead of running away from all those scary feelings inside you, cuddle up next to them and say howdy. Get to know them. Learn how they work. See them for what they are rather than what you feared they would be.

Yes, it’s hard, but this is what we do, people. We speak the unspeakable.

If you flinch at the idea of writing a steamy sex scene, how will you ever find the courage to address topics like suicide, double standards, and legacy? Those are the really tough topics, and the truth is, you’ll never be able to learn how to handle them with grace until you can feel something scary and not go running for cover.

In my opinion, sex is a good place to start, because while it’s dangerous, it’s also fun. Writing a steamy sex scene can and should be a helluva good time.

So get your freak on. I won’t tell anybody, I promise.

Exercise #4: Teach yourself how to say thank you

Sounds strange to say, but most people never really learn how to express gratitude.

Oh sure, we can squeak out a thank you over trivial niceties like someone opening a door or picking up a fallen pen. Maybe we can even send over a nice gift or two when the situation warrants it.

But when it’s bigger than that? When someone commits an act of kindness so selfless it warms our very soul?

Why, we fall speechless. The emotion is so strong, the gratitude so deep, we are unable to find words to express it.

The truth, though?

As a writer, you have to be better than that. Where others fumble about with clichés and platitudes, you must learn how to express exactly how you feel, to say exactly what you mean, transforming your thoughts into words and teleporting them into the mind of the reader.

A good way to learn how is to write a gratitude letter. Think through your life, pick somebody that changed it for the better, and then write a letter telling them how much you appreciate what they did.

When you’re done, ask yourself, “Is this what I really mean? Do the words match the emotion?” If the answer is no, toss the letter and start again, repeating as many times as necessary until you know it’s right, not just with your head, but also with your heart.

And then mail it to them, assuming they’re still living. If you get it right, and I know you will, the letter will touch them in a way few things ever have.

Exercise #5: Write a eulogy for someone you love

Ever seen an artist’s sketch that seems to capture what’s special about someone you know?

Not like a photograph, which is a snapshot of their physical features. Instead, it’s more like a glimpse into their soul, imperfect in its portrayal of how they look and yet somehow utterly perfect in its portrayal of who they are.

Well, that’s what this exercise is all about.

Grab a Kleenex box, and write a eulogy for someone you love. Maybe they’ve already passed, or maybe they haven’t, but imagine you’ve been tasked to stand up in front of all their friends and relatives and give a speech at their funeral.

Your job isn’t just to rattle off all their accomplishments, because, well, any old fool can do that. No, your job is to sketch their soul, to use your words to bring them back to life, if only for a moment, so everyone can say goodbye.

The big secret?

That’s what powerful writing is all about. Not taking “photos” of ideas, although I have nothing against photos, but sketching them, digging into their essence to reveal their essential nature and putting it out there for the entire world to see.

Do it for a loved one, and you can do it for other things too. Just give it a try, and you’ll see what I mean.

One word of warning, though:

This shit is hard, people

The great fallacy of the written word is that it’s about the words themselves. Choose the right ones, put them in the right order, and you’ll be fine and dandy.

Not.

As writers, we wrestle not with words, but with ourselves. Ideas, emotions, logic – those are the real building blocks of great writing, and if you’re to understand them, first you have to understand yourself.

It’s a tall order, one that will engage and challenge you until the day you die. Assuming you’re willing to try, of course.

And most people aren’t.

They’ll read the exercises above and think, “Lordy, I’ll have to do that someday.” But they won’t. They’ll go back to their robot writing and forget all about it.

I’m hoping you’re different. I’m hoping you’re one of the few that’s willing to work at this and get good. I’m hoping you’ll one day write with such soul and power the words will tremble upon the page.

The world needs more writers like that. Desperately so.

Will you be one of them?

About the Author: Jon Morrow has asked repeatedly to be called “His Royal Awesomeness,” but no one listens to him. So, he settles for CEO of Boost Blog Traffic, LLC.

We’ve all been deceived.

Once upon a time, we looked at blogging and thought, “Oh, I can do that. Writing a few posts a week? Piece of cake.” From the outside, it looks so simple, so easy, so fun, and so we rushed off to start a blog of our own.

But then we get a rude awakening:

This stuff is complicated. Blogging isn’t so much about writing blog posts as juggling dozens of little odds and ends, all of them important, all of them demanding your attention, and all of them requiring you to learn something.

And it’s easy to drop the ball, so to speak, or even all of them. Not because you want to neglect anything, but because it’s too much to keep track of.

What you really need is a checklist of sorts – an itemized breakdown of everything you need to do to transform your blog and dazzle your readers. That way, you can stop trying to handle everything all at once and just go through it one step at a time.

So, that’s what I created for you. Here are 58 things you need to do, along with some links to help you learn how to do them well.

Enjoy.

The Basics

1. Move to self-hosted WordPress, if you haven’t already. Yes, you can build a popular blog on WordPress.com or Blogger.com, but there are lots of reasons to move your blog to your own host, including having more control and looking more professional. (Note from Jon: for newbie bloggers, I recommend Hostgator (aff). If your blog is already gaining some traction, Synthesis is a good premium option.)

2. Are you in the right niche? If you make it too narrow you’ll struggle to build a large audience. Make it too wide, and you’ll find it really hard to stand out.

3. Rework your tagline. Your tagline needs to tell your readers who the blog is for, what it offers them and what makes it special (think unique selling proposition – USP). Clear is always better than clever.

4. Set up Akismet. It’s a plug-in that helps you eliminate comment spam. Most hosts include it by default, but you still need to set it up and get it going.

5. Schedule regular backups. You never know when your blog might get hacked, and the best defense is scheduling regular backups using a plug-in like BackWPup.

6. Create an ideal reader profile. If you know who your target audience is and write every post with them in mind, your results will improve significantly!

7. Develop a basic Editorial Calendar. Jot down the type of posts (list, interview, reader question, personal, epic, etc.) and fill in post ideas. This is fairly simple to do, and it keeps your content regular and flowing.

Improving your blog’s usability

8. Showcase a clutter-free design. Nothing sends your readers running faster than being greeted by a cluttered, tacky or spammy feel. Make a great first impression by with a stunning, clean and professional design and improve your website trust factor instantaneously.

9. Link to the archives. We would all like to believe our readers browse through the archives of our blog, but the reality is, they don’t. You need to remind them. In every new post, try to link to at least three or four old posts, sending your readers back in time to read your best work.

10. Display a list of your most popular posts. Showcase your best work and impress the heck out of first time visitors.

11. Position your opt-in form in a prominent position. People often hide their subscription form and then complain that nobody subscribes. Make it very easy for people to find your sign-up form. Top right on your sidebar or just above your main navigation bar are two good places.

12. Create a contact page. As soon as you start getting traffic, some of your readers will want to get in touch with you, so create a contact page and use a plug-in like Contact Form 7 to make getting in touch with you easy.

13. Show your social media profiles. Encourage visitors to connect with you on social media. This builds trust and deepens the connection.

14. Perfect your About Me page. This is the most frequently visited page of your blog after your home page. It also has the longest shelf life. It’s worth really looking at how others have done it, and then to make yours as professional and well thought out as possible. You certainly don’t want people bouncing off this page. They need to subscribe to updates then and there.

15. Have clear guidelines for guest posting. If you want to attract quality posts from other bloggers, have a section with detailed advice on the requirements and the process.

16. Add a sign up form after every post. Remind your readers that they should sign up to get your latest updates and special offers. People are distracted. They have tons on their minds. If you don’t remind them to sign up and make it very simple, they won’t do so.

Integrating Social Media

17. Display social share buttons. Again… If you don’t make it simple for people to recommend or share your work, chances are absolutely zero that they’ll do so. Make it really easy for them to participate.

18. Focus on and master one social platform. Instead of trying to be everywhere, attempt to do one well. Excellent results on one social network trumps mediocre results on five.

19. Schedule promotions for your own posts. Sign up for a free Hootsuite account and pre-schedule Tweets or Facebook updates.

About your content…

20. Maintain an idea file. Always be on the lookout for new ideas for getting inspired to write. And have someplace where you can easily record them to refer back to later.  Use Evernote as an online catch-all for writing ideas.

21. Maintain a decent posting frequency. Posting every day is a silly strategy and you need to follow the 80-20 rule. Spend 20% of your time creating content and 80% promoting it.

22. Conduct surveys. At one point or the other, you’ll be struck by writer’s block. Ask your audience what they want to read about. They might surprise you.

23. Learn from the best. I don’t care what anyone says, content is still king. Make sure your content doesn’t suck. Otherwise, your subscriber count might be stuck on single digits — indefinitely.

24. Hone in your headline writing skills. You need to make your audience curious, and you always need to spell out the benefit of them reading the post. Make prospective readers and subscribers think: I have to read that, right now!

25. Start every post with an irresistible introduction. Draw your reader down into the rest of the post. Get them from one sentence to the next, working their way through your post. If people aren’t even reading, none of the other good benefits will come.

26. Make your writing screen-friendly. Take a step back and see how your writing looks — visually. Pretty it up by adding sub-headings, bulleted points, numbered lists, images and lots of white space. Make it easy on the eyes.

27. Incorporate effective communication principles in your writing. Clarity, conciseness, and connection: they make the world go round.

28. Show off your personality. Develop your personal writing voice. Dare to be a little different. Don’t try and sound like everyone else. This will help you seem less boring.

29. Tell stories. Captivate your audience instantly.

30. Add a call to action to every post. What do you want your reader to do? Give it a powerful ending. If you inspire people to act, they will see results and love you for encouraging them.

31. Create link bait. Give people reasons to link to you… Epic posts. Huge list posts. Interviews. Reviews of other (popular!) bloggers’ work and products. One successful link bait post can bring you traffic and subscribers for years.

32. SEO friendly content. Write for humans first, and they’ll make sure that your content ranks well for search engines. Win win.

33. Engage with your community. Aim to increase the number of comments on your posts every time you write one.

34. Have fun with content syndication. Submit your content to various content syndication sites like Alltop. These sites can be good sources of targeted and engaged readers.

35. Be consistent in your guest posting strategy. You don’t have a strategy, you say? How on earth do you plan to grow your list? If you can’t get people to come over to you, it only makes sense to go where they are. Devise a strategy.

Forming strong connections

36. Follow blogs in your niche. Your blog is not an island. You can’t do it alone. You have to find your tribe and become a part of it. Find your people or remain invisible.

37. Comment on other bloggers’ posts. Be strategic about it. Be smart. Know what you want to gain from your efforts. If you said traffic only, you’re in the doghouse. Quality connections are just as important.

38. Reach out to A-list bloggers via email. Keep it short and tell them why you appreciate their work. Ask how you can help them (not the other way around).

39. Follow them on social media. No brainer.

40. Link to them. Duh!

41. Interview them. Ask them to answer a few questions on a topic they’re passionate about. When they’re committed advocates for some cause, it’s hard for them to say no.

42. Ask for a guest post. Only after you’ve developed a meaningful connection with them and know their blog and audience intimately, pitch them a great idea. But be sure to do your homework first.

43. Ask them to share a post published on your own blog. Only after your guest post has done really well, or you have guest posted multiple times. Only when your post is your best work, and will really resonate with their audience. There aren’t any exceptions.

Monetization

44. Build your email list. First, attract the right kind of traffic to your blog. Then impress them with your savvy, knowledgeability and generosity, and guess what? They’ll subscribe.

45. Offer a subscribe incentive. Give new subscribers free access to an ebook or report they can’t refuse. Make it super useful. Make it a killer. Give them something they’ll want to read (not something you think they should read).

46. Do consultations. The best way to find out what your readers want to buy is to get on the telephone and do some good old-fashioned consulting. Listen to their problems, and then try out different solutions. Soon, you’ll find a common problem and a solution that seems to work for everybody. That’s when you know you have promising product idea.

47. Create a hire me page. You’re running a business, so start acting like you are. Add a hire me page for all to see. Don’t be shy about this. Use your blog to build your business.

48. Get and display testimonials. Back up what you offer by positive feedback from past and present customers.

49. Be careful with advertising. Only display ads on your blog if the income is too good to refuse. If you do, keep the ads relevant to your audience.

50. Consider affiliate marketing. When you’ve reached the point where you actually have a substantial list, it might make sense to recommend quality products that will solve some of your audience’s problems.

51. Venture into creating your own products and running continuity programs. Multiple income streams… The name of the game.

Developing a success mindset

52. Find mentors. Even the self-appointed ones who have no clue that they’ve taken this role work fine.

53. Invest in your online business education. Coaching, classes, courses, training, events, ebooks — whatever works for you. Keep doing it.

54. Shift strategies — evolve. It’s OK to change things as you grow. Your blog isn’t static. It’s constantly evolving, just like you are.

55. Be persistent — and consistent. You don’t have a choice.

56. Celebrate your wins. A few Facebook likes. A couple of retweets. A comment here and there. A guest post invitation by a popular blogger. 70 email subscribers in a day. Orders pouring in. Being completely booked out… You get the drift. Celebrate your positive moments to keep yourself motivated.

57. Thank your advocates and fans. You’re here today because of them. Don’t forget that.

58. Have fun! Be unforgettable.

And that’s a wrap!

I know, it’s a long, long list, but there’s also a bit of a silver lining at the end of the rainbow here. The good news?

You don’t have to juggle forever

Yes, blogging is a lot of work. Yes, it’s complicated. Yes, it’s overwhelming.

But it gets easier.

As you check off the items above, you’ll slowly have less and less to do. One by one, you’ll be snatching balls out of the air and putting them down forever.

Sure, there are a few types of tasks like creating great content and forming strong connections that you’ll always be doing, but you can check off at least half of the items on this list once and for all, never having to worry about them again. Or at least, not for a while.

And the best part?

You now have links to all the resources you need to help you do it. So, get to work, start checking those babies off, and make 2013 the year when you become a blogging superstar!

About the author: Marya Jan is a blogging coach for solopreneurs, small business owners and bloggers looking to grow their business. Find more of her stuff at Writing Happiness. Don’t forget to grab her free ebook “9 New Rules of Blogging – How to Grow Your Business with Little Traffic, No Connections & Limited Hours.”

Waves of pain unimaginable shot down my spine, causing every muscle in my body to contract as if I’d been shocked with 20,000 volts of electricity. My back arched up at an unnatural angle. My arms and legs began to shake.

One moment, I was on a webinar talking to a few hundred people about traffic, walking them through exactly how to build a popular blog. The next, everything went dark. I was still conscious, but just barely.

Underneath the layers of pain, I remember thinking, “You can’t pass out. You have to finish talking about how to build an email list.” Of course, the pain was so bad I’d forgotten how to freaking see, much less pontificate on the intricacies of opt in pages.

So, I stopped. I waited a few seconds. My vision slowly returned, and I was able to wiggle the mouse up to the “Mute” button again.

For the next several minutes, I just sat there, quivering and trying to catch my breath as waves of pain continued up and down my spine. Eventually, the pain receded somewhat, and I wiggled the mouse back up to the “Mute” button again.

“Sorry folks,” I said. “Looks like GoToWebinar is having some technical difficulties. Can everyone hear me now?”

They said they could. We finished the webinar. Immediately afterward, I went to bed and stayed there for the next 16 hours.

And the worst part?

It was a normal day. I’d nearly collapsed on several webinars, not just that one. You might’ve even been on one of them.

Part of me worried if I was about to die. Another part hoped I would, just to be free of the pain.

I was at the end of my rope. One way or another, things were about to change.

Hold on, though. Let’s back up a bit.

On suicide

When I was in college, my best friend calmly informed me he was going to kill himself.

A few months earlier, he had gone to the hospital in a horrible pain, and doctors found more than a dozen tumors nestled around his spine. He’d been on nonstop radiation treatments and narcotics ever since, but the tumors weren’t shrinking, and he was still in a lot of pain.

“I can’t take this anymore,” he said. “If this pain doesn’t stop, I’m going to blow my brains out. I’ve already bought the gun.”

I stared at him, horrified. Thanks to being born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, I’ve had more than my share of tough times, including more than a dozen bouts with pneumonia, over 50 broken bones, and a spine reconstruction surgery with, I kid you not, a two-year recovery time.

But I never considered killing myself. Not once.

Noticing my silence, my friend looked up at me and wheezed out a small laugh. “You don’t understand, do you? Not even you.”

I shook my head. “Come on, man. You’re stronger than this. You’ll fight through.”

For a long time, he said nothing. Then, in almost a whisper, he said, “Strength doesn’t last forever.”

A few weeks later, he refused treatment. He would’ve died, if not for his four-year-old daughter breaking down in tears and begging him not to give up. Just to console her, he resumed treatment, and six months later, he was cancer free. He’s still alive to this day.

I never understood what he said, though. Not until almost the same thing happened to me.

For my entire life, I’ve been like Superman. I can’t move from the neck down, but I graduated college at the top of my class, built several successful businesses, and now I’m one of the most popular bloggers in the world.

But as it turns out, even Superman has his limits. Strength doesn’t last forever.

On shame

I didn’t tell anyone about the pain.

It started small enough. A bit of aching in my lower back, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I just plowed right through it like I usually do, working 12 hour days,

A few months after moving to Mexico though, I knew I was in trouble. The pain crept up until I felt like my legs were on fire, a dagger was buried between my shoulders, and a bullet was lodged in my brain.

Suffice it to say that it hurt. Bad.

Not just every now and again, either. I was in pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

And it was like kryptonite.

Where I used to have endless energy, I struggled just to stay alert for a few hours each day. Where I used to always be the smartest guy in the room, I went through the day feeling cloudy and confused. Where I used to have unshakable confidence, I was now afraid to get on the phone with a client for fear of falling apart in front of them.

I was able to do just enough to scrape by without my entire business falling apart, and I spent the rest of my time hiding, ashamed of what I had become:

Weak.

This went on for more than six months, and I didn’t tell a soul. Not my friends, not my family, not my employees. Only the nurses taking care of me knew what I was going through.

And for the first time in my life, I understood how somebody could commit suicide.

It’s not that they want to die, necessarily. They just want the pain to stop, and killing themselves seems like the only way.

Thankfully, I never got quite that hopeless. It might’ve happened eventually, but I held onto the belief that, no matter how bad it gets, eventually things will improve. That’s not always true, but that belief (or faith) kept me from ever considering taking my life.

I did come to understand suicide, though. All forms of it.

When a businessman loses all his money and puts a gun to his head, people think, “How could he do that? It’s only money.” What they don’t understand is it has nothing to do with money.

It’s about looking at your situation and knowing you don’t have what it takes to get through it. It’s too painful, and you’re too weak. That’s when you make one of two decisions.

You kill yourself.

Or you ask for help.

The painful truth about accomplishing your goals

After six months of nearly nonstop pain, I came to an important realization:

I’m not Superman.

Yes, I’m super smart. Yes, I’m super disciplined. Yes, I’m super talented.

But bullets don’t bounce off my chest. I can’t go more than two days without sleep. If the pain gets bad enough, I will pass out.

In other words, I have limits. You’d think I would’ve known that, but I didn’t. I thought I could do everything, all by myself, forever.

Heh.

The harsh reality of the situation was, I needed help. Not just from doctors, but from my family, friends, employees, everyone.

So, I broke down and told them. I asked for help. I admitted I wasn’t Superman.

And surprise, surprise:

Everyone bent over backwards to help me.

My mother dropped out of her last semester in her MBA program to drive me back to the US to see some better doctors. One of my nurses left her husband and four-year-old daughter in Mexico, traveling with me and caring for me 24 hours a day. Marsha, my assistant, took over managing everything and everyone, even hiring a few extra people to carry the workload.

I went to see a renowned spinal surgeon. He ordered an MRI of my entire spine. I came back for the results, my palms sweating, my heart pounding, half expecting a death sentence.

“There’s good news and bad news,” the doctor said. “Which do you want first?”

I thought about it. “The good news.”

He smiled. “The good news is there’s nothing wrong with your spine. You’re fine. For now, at least.”

I didn’t believe him. “Then why am I in so much pain?”

“That brings us to the bad news,” he said. “Your blood pressure is 160/100, which I’m guessing is the stress of running your business. You’re about 30 pounds overweight, and because you have hardly any muscle in your back, it’s pushing your vertebrae together and pinching about a half-dozen nerves.”

I was stunned. “You mean I just need to relax and lose weight?”

He smiled. “You got it.” We shook hands, and he walked out the door.

Fast forward three months, and I’m about 10 pounds lighter, I no longer work weekends, and I’ve doubled the size of my staff. The result: my blood pressure is now 125/80, and the pain is worlds better. It’s still there, for sure, but it’s going down, and I think it might disappear completely after losing another 20 pounds.

In retrospect, I feel like an idiot.

I was working myself to death. Literally. At the time, I was even proud of it. As it turns out, though, I’m not Superman.

And the painful truth?

You’re not either.

The shocking reason why most bloggers fail

It isn’t a lack of talent.

It’s not bad luck.

It has nothing to do with traffic.

The problem is Superman Syndrome. You’re smart and motivated and hard-working, so you figure you have everything it takes to build a popular blog.

Wrong.

To understand why, imagine you’re going on a long trip with some friends, and the airlines will only let you take one suitcase. You stuff it full, zip it closed, and then start to walk out the door, but then you notice one sock you overlooked. You unzip the suitcase, cram in the sock, and try to close it again, but now it’s just too full. It won’t close.

Well, that suitcase is your life, and the sock is your blog.

Chances are, you’re already running yourself ragged between work and family and friends, and there’s just no more room for anything else. It seems like you should be able to squeeze in time for your blog, because after all, it’s just a few hours here and there, but for most people, it’s “one sock too many.”

So, you have five choices:

1. Quit. Decide your life is just too full, and leave blogging to other people.
2. Shove the sock in any way, risking making the suitcase explode. (That’s what I used to do. Not surprisingly, the suitcase, my life, eventually exploded in the form of horrific pain.)
3. Leave something behind. Stop watching television, quit your job, or hire an assistant to do the laundry and your groceries for you.
4. Learn to pack more efficiently. If you get serious about time management, you can, in fact, get more done in the same amount of time, but it has its limits.
5. Give the sock to a friend to carry. In other words, ask for help.

In my experience, a combination of #4 and #5 is the right answer for most people who are serious about building a popular blog. #3 can also work, but it requires Olympic athlete self-discipline, and if you had that, you would already be a popular blogger.

You’ll also be tempted to believe you can get by only with #4, time management, but it’s not true. You can’t take care of your kids, hold a full-time job, and build a blog at the same time any more than you can squeeze a stretch limousine into a suitcase. It’s just not possible.

So, what do you do?

Ask for help

To use our suitcase metaphor, you ask a friend to carry the sock for you.

More specifically:

The biggest time sinkhole for most bloggers is the technical stuff. You beat your head against the wall trying to get your theme, plug-ins, e-mail list, and web hosting working together, wasting weeks or even months where you should have been writing posts.

The solution?

Outsource it.

Thanks to the glory of the Internet, there are thousands of freelance techies out there waiting for work, and the rates are surprisingly cheap. You can get a lot of simple WordPress problems solved on Fiverr.com, where everything costs five bucks. For more complex jobs, go to oDesk.com and hire someone in India, Russia, or the Philippines.

You might think you can’t afford it, but it’s astonishingly cheap. You can get almost any problem taken care of for less than $50.

What’s more valuable to you: $50 or three months of progress you lost by trying to do it yourself?

Also, asking for help doesn’t always mean hiring a freelancer. A lot of successful bloggers I know have designated hours where they write, and they get their family and friends to agree not to interrupt them, unless it’s a life or death emergency.

If you’re really brazen, you can even take it a step further and ask them to do the laundry, pick the kids up from school, get groceries, and all the other little tasks you normally do, just to give you a chance to write. You might be surprised at what they would do for you, if they understood how serious you are.

The bottom line?

Whatever you do, don’t try to keep going by yourself. You’ll fail.

Maybe not at first, but eventually, your strength will run out. Hopefully you won’t drive yourself to the brink of despair like I did, but you might still burn yourself out and want to quit. Maybe you’re already there.

If you are, the solution isn’t audacious goals.

The solution isn’t positive thinking.

The solution isn’t more self-discipline.

It’s surrounding yourself with people who can help you shoulder the load. No one can go it alone. Not even you.

So, stop trying.

Pull out your list of goals, and write down beside each one who is going to help you accomplish it. If you can’t think of anyone, make finding someone your biggest priority.

After all, that’s the real story, isn’t it? Not a superhero, standing alone against the darkness, but a superhero and a sidekick, steely-eyed and ready for war.

Hurry up and get yourself one.

And then go out there and kick some butt in 2013. The bad guys won’t know what hit ‘em.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the Founder and CEO of Boost Blog Traffic.

Let’s be honest.

It’s a huuuuge challenge.

Probably the biggest challenge each blogger faces.

Because your readers suffer from many distractions.

Social media. Email. Other blogs. TV. Radio. Phone calls. Texts. A car driving past. People talking. Music.Thoughts popping up.

How the hell can you keep your readers spellbound?

How can you keep your readers glued to your content until your last sentence?

How can you keep them yearning for more?

It’s not easy.

But you can learn how to master the art of being fascinating. Enchanting. Captivating. Almost mesmerizing.

How?

You just need to understand the triggers to being fascinating. Once you apply these triggers, your readers will hang on to every word you write.

The 7 psychological triggers to fascination

Let me quickly tell you this first.

These seven triggers are based on research outlined in an *uh* fascinating book by Sally Hogshead. You’ll also find a personality test on her website. Try it! The test will tell you which triggers you’re already using successfully; and how you can learn to use your dormant triggers, too.

These are the seven fascination triggers: Passion, Mystique, Alarm, Prestige, Power, Rebellion, and Trust.

You don’t need to use all triggers. You can choose the triggers that suit your personality. You can pick a few or you can use them all. But for blogging and other forms of online communication, at least one is mandatory. I’ll get back to that later.

Let’s look at each trigger and discuss how you can use it to make your blog irresistibly fascinating.

Trigger 1: Passion

“Passion is the sense of participation that you have when you’re with someone who makes you want to come out of yourself and make an emotional connection.” — Sally Hogshead

For your readers to react to your writing, and to share it with their friends, you have to create a deep connection with them.

But here’s the thing:

Information doesn’t connect with people. Passion does. And emotion…

So, to connect with your readers, you have to infuse your writing with both passion and emotion.

How?

Simple.

Write about something you’re passionate about. Let your personality shine through. Be yourself, warts and all.

And use emotion-rich and sensory language such as a sleazy sales man, a rough day and SEO harakiri.

If your readers feel your passion, you connect with them, and you’ll see a boost in social sharing.

Trigger 2: Mystique

“Mystique flirts with us, provoking our imagination, hinting at the possibilities, inviting us to move closer while eluding our grasp.” — Sally Hogshead

Mystique teases us because we want to find answers, solve puzzles, and learn secrets. If you can generate some curiosity in the headlines or sub-headlines of your blog posts, you will increase the number of people willing to read them.

Have a look at these headlines from Derek Halpern:

• What’s the BEST color for high conversions?
• The dumb pricing mistake people make (and how to fix it)
• How to Eliminate “Wallet Closing Words” From Your Emails, Sales Pages, and Speech

These headlines make you curious. But headlines aren’t the only way to use the mystique trigger. You know stories keep us interested because we always want to know what’s happening next, don’t you?

Using cliffhangers is one of the most powerful tools in storytelling. A cliffhanger makes your readers anxious to know what’s going to happen next.

Make your readers dying to learn about your next blog post, your next email, or your next status update. Tell your readers what great, beneficial content you’ll have for them in your next email.

Or just build anticipation by announcing you’re developing something brand spanking new. Just don’t give away all the details yet.

Mystique makes your readers curious. And keeps them dying to learn more.

Trigger 3: Alarm

“Alarm demands a response now.” — Sally Hogshead

Of course, you can use deadlines to get people to act. If you don’t download now, the ebook will no longer be available free. If you don’t buy now, the price goes up. Or the course closes.

That’s one way to use the alarm trigger.

Another is to inspire action by focusing on people’s fears. Their worst fears. For example: the fear of being forgotten when we die.

Have you read How to be unforgettable?

Jon makes you feel afraid of being forgotten, and then he inspires you to take your blogging efforts more seriously. Because you want to be remembered when you die.

That’s the power of alarm.

You just have to be careful. Don’t apply the alarm trigger to each blog post you write. It stops working if you use it too much, and it can even get annoying.

Trigger 4: Prestige

“[P]restige can increase your perceived value.” — Sally Hogshead

How can you gain A-list status as a blogger?

How can you be admired and respected? And be recognized for what you’ve achieved?

Well, you’ll have to earn your status. And that’ll take some time — you can’t develop a track record overnight.

Take for instance Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. He has earned respect by sharing his tips for making money online and by showing exactly how much money he earns from his various online activities. That kind of success doesn’t happen overnight, though.

Also, prestige doesn’t necessarily have to come from money. If you get lots of comments and retweets and likes on Facebook, people start to respect you too.

Of course, that takes traffic. Thankfully though, there is a shortcut to generating traffic and getting more readers:

Guest blogging.

If you guest post on the best-known, most-respected blogs, more people will get to know you, and you’ll drive more readers to your blog, not to mention raise your status just through the power of association. For example, take the epic 7,037-word post like Tommy Walker did for ChrisBrogan.com. If you write a post like that and get over 3000 shares and Facebook and nearly that many on Twitter, everyone is going to take notice of who you are.

The keyword in the above paragraph: epic. If you want to trigger prestige, you need to publish epic posts, both for A-list blogs and for your own.

There’s also one more small trick to boosting your track record. Every time you publish a guest post on a popular blog, put their logo on your site and say, “As seen on.”

Prolific guest blogger Danny Iny has quite a few on his Firepole Marketing website. And Tommy Walker has a cool quote from Chris Brogan on the Tommy.ismy.name website. That boosts his track record, too.

Trigger 5: Power

“Whether parental or dictatorial, authority figures use power to control us.” — Sally Hogshead

Power on the web isn’t dictatorial. You can’t force people to listen to you.

But if you become an authority, people will want to know what you have to say. They’ll seek your advice. They’ll want to link to you.

How can you build authority as a blogger?

Decide on your niche and your mission first. You have to find a way to be different, to stand out from the crowd. And then, build your authority:

• Know your stuff;
• Produce incredibly helpful content;
• Develop a unique voice and have an opinion.

That’s how Copyblogger became an authority in content marketing. That’s how Darren Rowse became an authority in blogging. And that’s how Marcus Sheridan became an authority in inbound marketing. They all know their stuff. They all produce awesome, useful content, and they have an opinion, their own way of doing things, and a unique voice.

Your power as a blogger doesn’t come from your ability to fire your readers or to give them a pay rise.

You don’t have access to an army of violent fighters to get them to behave. You can’t even lock your readers up when they misbehave.

But you can be on a mission, build trust and authority, and create a loyal tribe.

Trigger 6: Rebellion

“Rebellion is about creativity and innovation. It’s taking a problem that everybody looks at in one way and interpreting it in another way.” — Sally Hogshead

Are you subscribed to Ben Settle’s email newsletter?

He’s an expert in using the rebellion trigger at different levels:

• He uses bad language;
• He misspells words on purpose;
• He breaks taboos: telling you to email your subscribers daily; to ignore open rates, and to applaud unsubscribers.

You could easily decide to ignore Ben, because it sounds a little too crazy. But you don’t ignore him, because he balances rebellion with the power and prestige triggers.

Ben has a loyal following of fans because he knows his stuff. For example: he often quotes other copywriters – that’s the power trigger. He has also written for Copyblogger, and he lists recommendations from high-profile copywriting experts on his website. That’s using the prestige trigger.

That’s how you mix up different triggers. Now, let’s look at a trigger that surely needs to be part of your blogging efforts…

Trigger 7: Trust

“You can dabble in prestige, or experiment with power, but you can’t dip in and out of trust. It must be established consistently.” — Sally Hogshead

The online world is full of pretenders, spammers and liars. While you can discard other triggers, you can’t do without trust. You can’t think of a popular blogger that’s not trustworthy, can you?

To establish trust as a blogger, you have to become familiar. Turn up regularly – on your own blog or as a guest blogger. Use social media to stay in touch. Or even better: email your audience on a regular basis.

In addition to posting on his blog Chris Brogan sends his subscribers an email each Sunday. He writes his emails as if you’re his friend and if you’re having a cup of tea together. Same conversational style each Sunday. That’s a good way to stay in touch with your audience. And to become trustworthy.

Remember your mission? Write about it. Often. And be authentic. You don’t have to bare all, but you have to be yourself. Don’t pretend. Develop your own voice. And be consistent.

Start building trust now. Because you can’t become popular without it.

The shocking truth about being fascinating

You don’t need talent to be fascinating.

Anyone can leave their readers breathless by using these fascination triggers in their posts.

There’s no magic there. Just the decision and commitment to give this a go.

Does your online future matter to you?

Of course it does.

So, will you take the time to make every piece of writing fascinating?

Of course you will! Because if you’re fascinating, then you’ll build an engaged tribe; and you’ll gain raving fans who spread your ideas for you. .

Make the commitment to yourself right now… Promise to never publish drab, boring content ever again.

That’s what makes all the difference!

About the author: Henneke Duistermaat is a UK based marketer. She is on a mission to make boring companies charming, enchanting, and persuasive. Sign up for her Enchanting Marketing newsletter and receive free tips on copywriting and content marketing.