Ahmed Bilal has put up another great post on Performancing related to the attitude required to build your personal success. This is something I don’t think we bloggers have spent enough time considering.

My favourite from the list is his seventh point, which is entitled, “Find Yourself and Your Target”.

When it comes to success (and making money), it’s important to know what you want. To figure that out, you need to know what your strengths are (fields of work as well as type of work) and what impassions you. While your interests will evolve with time, getting your bearings right at the start makes it easier to make course corrections in the future.

Once you know what you want, you have to figure out what to do.

This point works well in any job, or even just with your life in general, because for some people, deciding what to do is half the battle. This is a post definitely worth checking out, and even more so if you have wondered, “do I need a personality adjustment to reach my goals?”

Originally posted on October 23, 2007 @ 9:07 am

In the same vein as a recent video blog by Darren Rowse, Stephen at Daily Blog Tips has posted about having blogging goals, and how that can pay in huge dividends later on.

He gives some expamples on how setting goals, and achieving them can reward you as a blogger. Here is one of the three examples he posts:

Example Three: Your blog earns you an average of $40 per month in advertising revenue. Your goal is to increase your earnings by 5% every quarter. If you succeed at this, your blog will generate about $50 per month after one year, about $60 per month after two years, and more than $70 per month after three. In that time, your blog will end up earning over $500 more than if your revenue had remained the same.

Honestly, with many blogs, you can shoot a little higher than what they have put in this example and most blogs have an exponential curve, which will help drive you to make higher, better, more interesting goals. My goal for this site, this month, was to get to 10,000 unique visitors, and at the half way point, I only need another twelve hundred more unique visitors, and I have reached that goal.

It is amazing how goals breed success. Give it a try, and you might be surprised at the rewards.

Originally posted on October 15, 2007 @ 9:00 pm

Looks like Adii, the self-proclaimed WordPress Rockstar, is looking for editors and writers for his upcoming WordPress Magazine.

Here are the details from Jobs.Problogger.net:

We’re in the process of setting up The WordPress Magazine and we’re looking for editors and writers to join our staff team for the various sub-sections / focus areas of the magazine.

The magazine will be run on a similar basis as Smashing Magazine, so make sure that you can produce that length and quality content if you’re interested in this position.

Note: One of the main requirements for these positions is that you need to know your way around WordPress, as you would need to produce in-depth, intelligent content about WordPress.

We are looking for co-editors (who will be offered a shareholding and a share of profits in the venture) and freelance bloggers (paid on a negotiated fee per post basis) in the following areas (feel free to apply for more than one of the positions):

1. WordPress Designs / Themes. (Co-Editor & Junior Writers)
2. WordPress Plugins. (Only Junior Writers)
3. Blog Reviews. (Only Junior Writers)
4. General WordPress News (& Related Web 2.0 news). (Co-Editor & Junior Writers)
5. WordPress Connection (connect with WP designers, developers etc). (Co-Editor & Junior Writers)

How to apply
E-mail me at [email protected] or through my blog’s contact page, specifying the following:

> Which of the positions you want to apply for
> Relevant experience in the positions you are applying for
> Examples of related content that you have produced
> Indicate whether you’re happy to accept a shareholding / share of the profits (if we appoint you as co-editor)

Seems like a great position for anyone with expertise in WordPress to get their name out there, though like any new blog, it will be hard work.

Originally posted on October 15, 2007 @ 8:30 pm

So it looks like the big news of today is the acquisition of Jaiku by Google. Jaiku is a micro-blogging platform in the same vein as Twitter, and Pownce. It allows you to quickly blog about what you are up to or what you are interested in. Even better for some people, it allows you to add your thoughts via your cell phone.

Mark Evans has a few more details on his blog calling it the Blogger-lite acquisition:

More than four years ago, Google bought Pyra Labs (aka Blogger.com), and since that time Google has done a darn job of pretty much ignoring Blogger while WordPress and TypePad have become fast-growing blog platforms.

So, it’s interesting to see Google move aggressively into the micro-blogging market with the acquisition today of Jaiku, which competes against Twitter and Pownce. I assume the move it part of Google’s ambitious wireless plans, which apparently include the much-anticipated GPhone.

It will be interesting to see how large the Google platform grows over the coming year, and with their stocks hitting $600 a share and continuing its upward trend, I don’t think Google plans on slowing down any time soon.

Originally posted on October 9, 2007 @ 8:34 pm

Google Blogoscoped has posted about link usability, and some of their eleven tips could mean the difference between someone clicking on your links, or ignoring them completely.

Here is one of the eleven tips in the post:

The first link should be the most important. As a rule of thumb – and there may be exceptions – the first link in a blog post or article will gain the most attention, and the highest click rates. So make sure it’s also the most relevant one for your article. If you are discussing new website XYZ, then make a link to XYZ the first link in your article – not necessarily within the first sentence, but just the first link – and put links to related material over subsequent words. This allows visitors to be guided best.

I have used this tactic many times to get people to click on affiliate links. Just put it before any other links in your post, and even before reading the whole post, people will click on them.

Originally posted on October 28, 2007 @ 3:18 pm