We Are on Problogger II
By Mark on Mar 26, 2008 in Featured
Hi everybody I just wanted to share something with you that happened in the ea
rly hours of this morning. I stayed up quite late this morning in order to listen to a webinar, which as it happens was about a micro-blogging platform, well several actually, as I was waiting to listen to the call.
I was sitting on twitter and noticed that Darren Rowse, was feeling a bit uninspired and wanted people to send him their best post of the week, so at first I wasn’t really sure which one to send then I just thought why not send the post about being on Reuters, it seemed to me to be the perfect fit.
So I sent that tweet to him on twitter, and just left it at that I know a lot of people follow him on twitter, so I didn’t know whether or not he would see my tweet, so a few minutes later I noticed my e-mail program was showing new mail being as, I am quite a curious type of person.
I had a look and it was a e-mail from my blog asking for a comment to be moderated, as I looked at the e-mail in more depth, I noticed it was from a domain in Australia so I went to my dashboard to moderate the comment and where it had come from.
It just so happens it was a trackback from probloggers, website he had kindly put my tweet in his post, so this naturally created a link back to my blog. And as a result of this I am now starting to get traffic from it, and because some people have republished the original post that is bringing other sources of traffic and other links as well to my blog.
I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about all of this happening, in short a short space of time what with the posts on Reuters and now this well I am just speechless.
So far it’s been and in amazing week for me and my blog and it just seems to keep getting better all the time. And to finish this post I would just like to share something with you, which goes to prove if you have the right mindset you can accomplish amazing things.
Quite some time ago now I wrote down a list of intentions and one of them was to have a successful blog bringing in lots of traffic, I did have a look for the piece of paper on which I wrote this but I can’t find it, and now that very dream that I had written on that piece of paper is now happening.
I don’t know if you have seen the movie The Secret, but when I first saw this I really enjoyed watching it even if it is supposed to be hocus-pocus, but the mindset that I’ve been adopting quite recently is constantly telling myself that I’m going to be successful and make it.
And quite amazingly it seems to be working, even when I meditate, I tend to see myself at my computer focused and writing all these great posts, I would just like to say, Darren thank you so much for doing this for me I am so truly grateful I really am.
To put into words how I feel at this very moment in time, would be extremely hard to explain, but if there is such a thing as cloud nine, then I think I am on it now, and will be for quite some time. And for anybody who is reading this post and thinks, I wish I could be successful like that well there is only one thing that I can say based on my experience just do it, I used to stop myself from doing things all the time because of a fear of failure.
But one thing I learned was that successful people do in fact fail in order to succeed, you have to take the rough with the smooth there is no other way, so you understand what I’m saying I haven’t just banged this blog up and got all this straight away, I was on blogger for a year struggling like crazy to get any kind of traffic let alone recognition.
And at times I kept asking myself what am I doing this for I’m not getting anywhere, but nonetheless something kept me going, I did have long periods of time where I didn’t write anything at all due to unforeseen circumstances that happened about 15 months ago.
I suffered with bouts of depression on and off since Christmas, due to the anniversary of losing my father. Then at the end of January something told me I needed to be doing something now so I came back to my Internet Marketing roots, turned on the computer and more or less started from scratch.
Even though last August I had moved my blog to, WordPress and its own domain I did have some success in that month due to the fact of what I learnt in the 30 day challenge. But because I wasn’t writing any posts for such a long time my traffic levels dwindled down to about between 20 to 25 visits a day.
And just before Christmas I had signed up for the blogging mastermind programme that Yaro, runs, I had even gotten way behind in that and really hadn’t looked at the lessons at all, all in all I think there was about eight lessons in total that I hadn’t even looked at.
The real truth is I just couldn’t be bothered my head just felt numb that is the only way, I can really explain how I felt at the end of January, for some reason I was drawn to face book and remembered in the back of my mind that Sarah Harris had said that she was busy running a site called kaboom marketing.
At one time we will used to meet in a Skype chat room and discuss things and share links etc and what things were and weren’t working for as regards Internet Marketing, this was about the time that the 30 day challenge was being run. So I decided to see what this site was about I got a rough idea by reading the front page and also there was the mention of a book at the end of the information that was provided about the service they were running.
And it contained the methods they were using so I decided to buy it and with that I got two weeks free and decided well I have nothing to lose, so became a member I have known Sarah and Camilla. Since the 30 day challenge although I didn’t know Camilla that well at the time.
But that was the start of it all really I told Camilla and Sarah, about that I had been doing that much and so on, and when I first started they gave me a nudge here and there, when I would stray and forget to do things.
And from there I started reading my blogging mastermind lessons one a day so within about eight days, I had managed to catch up with that program and came up to date, I then started to write posts again and social bookmark my posts as well.
And slowly but surely as I added plug-ins to my blog and wrote more posts optimised my posts for the search engines things started to gradually start to happen traffic levels started to increase but I also did a lot of other things as well in the process, like adding my social site profiles to places like friend feeder and so on these are sites where you put all your things like twitter jaiku and pownce.
So people can see what you’re bookmarking and blogging etc. Then as time went on I decided to buy a new theme which I did, not long after that one of my posts was picked up by Reteurs and really it has all snowballed from there.
I really do hope that you get some inspiration from his post I know it isn’t related to weight loss or diet or food etc. But I felt that I would like to share my struggles how I’ve been feeling and what’s been going on hopefully some people will gain inspiration from this post and see that great things are possible no matter how bad things are at the time.
The moral of this story is a change of mindset can make amazing wonderful things happen as I now know.
if you would like to follow me on twitter here is my twitter profile
Here is the post as it was shown on pro-bloggers website
P.S a quick note to the blog burst team this would look nice on Reuters website don’t you think. Sorry couldn’t resist that if you can’t manage it Im ok with that.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Tags: Blogging, twitter







8 Comment(s)
By Steph White on Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
Hi Mark,
Congratulations on your Reuters & problogger links!
An inspirational story. Your determination, change of mindset and, most importantly, Taking Action are paying off.
Keep going Mark!
Steph.
Steph White’s last blog post..The Smart Marketer’s ToolBar - Launching Tomorrow
By Retro Garden on Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
Congratulations!
I’ve been featured on Darren’s blog a few times, and seemingly you get a load more traffic within something like that, rather than actually asking a question or making an observation. Hopefully they’ll stick around.
Came by via Twitter
Retro Garden’s last blog post..Arcades Are Rubbish Now - Build Your Own Instead
By Mark on Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
@ Steph thanks I felt I needed to write it somehow
@Retro Garden thanks for dropping by
By Ben Cope on Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
Congratulations on your site! It’s amazing what kind of results of you can achieve by simply setting your focus on what you want!
If there’s ever anything at all I can do to help you out, let me know!
Ben Cope’s last blog post..The Video Blog Dream Theme
By Dee on Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
I couldn’t be more pleased for you Mark.
Big Hug
D
By Mark on Mar 26, 2008 | Reply
Thanks Ben, Dee
By Joe Cheray on Mar 27, 2008 | Reply
Awesome Awesome Job!
Just got to feeling better here. Pain meds do wonders. I caught this on Facebook and wanted to come over and congratulate you on yet another huge step for your blog.
Keep up the good work my friend it’s about bloody time you get some great things going in your life.
Joe C.
By Glen Allsopp on May 5, 2008 | Reply
I didn’t know if you were being serious at first (i thought it was a little over the top). Then I realised that such little things as links really can be HUGELY appreciated by people.
I read your blog post to the end and wanted to say congratulations for getting through the depression to a point where you are now at.
Keep it up
Glen Allsopps last blog post..Online Reputation Management eBook is now Available!