In the last 6 and a half years I have been fortunate enough to network with some of the world’s most successful leaders in my industry, quit my day job, feature in films (Think & Grow Rich comes out Mid October, 2017) and travel half way around the world and this has all been made possible just by blogging about my passion “Personal Development“. I was even offered Millions of dollars to sell Addicted2Success 3 years into my journey but I turned the multiple offers down because I believed that I was just scratching the tip of the iceberg of what was to come with my brands growth and the positive impact we could have on this world.

There has been some ups and downs a long the way, some technical issues and doubts that I have faced, but I am lucky that I stuck it out because I have learned over time, what does and does not work when it comes to creating a successful blog.

So here are 10 things that I have learned along the way that I feel are super important for any blogger out there to know.

 

1. You Have to Have a Vision

6 and a half years ago I casted my 10 Year Vision for Success whilst sitting in a workshop with Jordan Belfort, The Wolf of WallStreet. I wrote out a 6 page Vision and started with the 10th year and reversed engineered it back to that very day of 14th April, 2011.

By the 6th year I was already living in my original 10 year Vision. This is the power of a Vision Game Plan. Your Vision disciplines you, it chooses your friends for you, it teaches you what to say “Yes” to and what to say “No” to. This plan has kept me on track over the last 6 and a half years and is the core reason why Addicted2Success has become the top Motivation & Inspiration Digital Media company online.

I remember working up in the desert of Western Australia catching snakes, lizards and kangaroos and many other wild Australian animals in the environmental team during some of the hottest days of summer in 130 degree fahrenheit heat. Although the money was good, the shifts were long as I was working 12 hour shifts, 28 days straight and was surrounded by negative people who did not believe in my dreams.

My vision pulled me through the tough times in the beginning and inspired me to work additional hours in my day to overtake my 9-5 income to a point where I had to tell my boss this 9-5 job was costing me too much to be here.

 

2. Don’t Try and be an Ace at Everything

You will burn yourself out and spread yourself way too thin. Eventually you will want to be covering every angle but to begin with pick one avenue and dominate that field.

Addicted2Success.com was my main focus to begin with. I could have started a podcast, written a book or Vlogged my way to the masses but I knew if I spread myself too thin in the beginning then it would take me 2 – 3x longer to hit my 10 year vision of 10 million views worldwide (which, by the way we are only 6 and a half years into the vision and we have hit 133 Million views so far. Im telling you a 10 Year Vision works!).

When I first started out, I chose Twitter to be the #1 social media platform to promote Addicted2Success.com. I made sure that it was a finally tuned channel, and the traffic from Twitter would then convert into Facebook traffic and mailing list subscribers. I then moved to Facebook and focused on that and so on and so on..

Twitter isn’t what it used to be but it sure did start as a great stepping stone that has lead us to a combined social media following of 2,500,650 followers across all channels to this day.

Find the hottest Social Media platform now and dominate the space so you can elevate from platform to platform like we did at Addicted2Success.

 

3. Don’t Alienate Yourself

Don’t forget that you are part of a community. The worldwide web is a community of people who are sharing information with one another. If someone has created a great article that you have been inspired by, why not refer to that article by linking to them. Other bloggers love this and in most cases (not all) will link back to you, visit your blog or tell others about you sometime in the future.

I used to think that if I linked out to others that this would take away from my blog. The truth is, people will look at other websites anyway. They will remember that you hooked them up with links to quality articles and bloggers and they are more likely to come back to you out of a loyalty for your quality at the end of the day.

I believe Abundance is a practice and to be honest, I didn’t crack through the lack mentality to reach the land of more abundance until I practiced sharing the success with others.

The Serial Entrepreneur & Best Selling Author “Yanik Silver“ once said to me:

“Why worry about breaking off too many pieces of the pie? When you can just bake more pies”.

So the lesson is, there is more than enough to go around, so share and care and you will be amazed by how many amazing opportunities come back and how many people will be willing to support you in your journey.

 

4. No More Billboard’n

One big standout mistake that I see a lot of bloggers make is covering their entire site in ads. Choosing to throw an annoying ad that is totally unrelated to the content you post right in your viewers face as soon as they enter the site, or even placing a video ad in the middle of a 200 word article is super douchey and people can tell that you are all about the money and that your priority is not about delivering valuable content to your audience.

You don’t want your site to look like a billboard. It devalues your website and is very distracting. If your viewers wanted to see an overload of ads they would just google a video of Times Square and stare at that.

 

5. You Can’t Do It All Alone

My good friend and business mentor “Tai Lopez” told me many years ago “You can’t do it all, if you wanna go big-time you need to find a partner that will compliment your weaknesses so you can focus on your strengths.”

Bill Gates had Paul Allen, Warren Buffett has Charlie Monger, Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak. They all found a strong, skilled partner to take their business to the next level.

I have aligned with a few business partners who are incredible at what they do and this has only added to the business and vision, it has never taken from it. That’s why I love helping others to achieve success online too. I create guides and run mastermind groups to show others how I have been able to achieve this success online so they too can help and inspire others with their journey.

If you haven’t already, make sure you get your hands on my guide, The Formula (The Secret Ingredients of Online Success)

This is the guide that I wish I had 6 and a half years ago. If I had this knowledge back then I would be where I am today in 1 to 2 years.

 

 

6. Understand Your Audience

Do you know what niche’ you fall under? A lot of people are just throwing everything out there that they think will stick and they are not holding or attracting their viewer’s attention because their subject is a little too broad.

Work out what your niche is. If it is a website about “The Art Of Hackey Sacking” then stick to hackey sacks. Don’t expand it out to sports of all sorts because it loses its edge and becomes a website that is going to leave you in a cesspool of millions of others that are covering the same old topics.

One guy in the US pulls in $10,000 a month from his blog about fancy cactus designs. If he can make 10k from cactus lov’n, you can just about make it with any creative niche’ that comes to mind.

 

7. Don’t Copy Your Competition

In most cases in business it is a great idea to study your competition so that you can out compete them. In the world of blogging, don’t do it! The key is to have your own unique flair and to be found by YOUR like-minded peers through search engines.

So if you are just writing articles the way that you would, and you are not writing an article for the sake of competing with an other, then you will position yourself in a place where you have no competition.

Multi Millionaire blogger Pete Cashmore said something that really resonated with me, he said:

“We are really competing against ourselves, we have no control over how other people perform.”

Pete Cashmore hit the nail right on the head with that one. Just do you! and you will be rewarded for it over time.

 

8. Use Your Blog As Leverage

Once you get a good amount of traffic in place ie..10,000+ a month then you can really start leveraging off that. Reach out to those with a large follower base and exposure than you and ask them if they would like to be featured on your site. Once you feature them, send them a ReTweet link or an e-mail blast out letter of the article that you featured them in so that they can share it with their network.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, among many celebrities who have supported Addicted2Success over the years, seemed to appreciate whenever we would write articles about him and every time he would share our articles on his Twitter channel we would get a flood of 10,000+ viewers.

You can even reach out to companies in your niche’ and see if they would be up for offering you a free product, service or discount to promote them on your blog and in turn you can give away the prize to your viewers. Competitions garner a lot of interest online and you can use competitions as a way to ask your viewers for feedback or input first to go in the draw.

I have also been able to use Addicted2Success and its reach to build a successful podcast called The Addicted2Success Podcast which is one of the top Business podcasts right now featuring Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Gary Vaynerchuk, Gabby Bernstein, Jack Canfield, Simon Sinek, Grant Cardone and 100+ other incredible leaders.

Start being resourceful. Look for ways that you can platform and leverage yourself off other materials and connections you have in your reach.

 

9. Minimize Your Page Load Time

Google pays a lot of attention nowadays to page speeds when it comes to SEO. All you need to do is head over to Google’s Page Speed Test and run a test on your domain name and it will give you an idea of what changes are needed to speed up your website load time.

I run Addicted2Success through CloudFlare which not only secures my site from DDoS attacks but surprisingly speeds up my page load time by 20%. Cloudflare is free and easy to set up so you should check it out when you get a chance.

The more graphics, flash and plugins you have on your page, the slower your site is going to load. Sometimes you have to sacrifice big files for a faster load. So it is a good idea to go back through your site and see what is in your sidebar, what plugins are activated and what un necessary old content is taking too long to load.

 

10. Get In The Zone (a little feng shui blogging)

So this has got to be one of the most important parts of blogging, which I believe has played an important part in my success online.

So before you start your day with blogging make sure you have had something to eat, something to drink and you are comfortable in your environment. Make sure that you have a clear and concise idea of how much time you have to work online for the day. Remove any distractions around you and time block your social media explorations so that you aren’t wasting your time on Facebook, reading ridiculous stories about Justin Bieber and cats.

If you want to inspire the world with your content then you need to live buy the rule of “Create > Consume”. Don’t be ruled by the robots, unplug and create so your content can be consumed by everybody else.

Make sure you start your day right with a little stretching, exercise, hydration and gratitude or prayer. Something that awakens a little energy in you, because you will need it when it comes time to be creative and to shine online. It may sound a little cheesy but if it helps you to feel more professional by wearing a suit, a beanie, or even having a coffee at arm’s length, then do it!

You have to be in the zone to produce your best material.

 

As you can imagine we are just scratching the surface with what I have written above. So Here’s One of the Facebook LIVE Videos I shot out in Colombia where I answered online business questions that I think you will Love:

 

If you love this article please don’t forget to share it and if you’d love to learn step by step how I built a blog worth millions with millions of views and millions of followers make sure you get a copy of my guide – THE FORMULA (The Secret Ingredients of Online Success).