What's my personal development blog missing?

I think it may be a little impatience because I think your site is awesome (Just from an initial perusing but still). I'm going to take a closer look at it and give you some more substantial feedback! Looks good though and your system seems very sound.

Anthony

Give some time to let your blog raise high.

Its completely nice

Hi Robert,

Your blog seems only a few months old. I agree with the others that you need to be more patient with this. It takes time to build a blog and a community. But it's a fun process. Keep providing quality content and building the relationship with your readers and you'll start seeing the results. Slowly at first, but don't get discouraged. You know the drill, you're in the personal development business, after all .

You're not going for the "fluffy feel good" audience, but the colors of your blog are the same as the other sites that might be targeting such people.

On your picture you have "I'm no guru, but I am a long time student of..."

No. YOU are the authority. People don't care about the opinions of anybody except somebody they believe KNOWS what they're talking about. This is why people like Kevin Nations can demand $6,000 a seat at his seminars, because he's confident that he knows what he's talking about, and people are convinced of his ability because he is.

Now me? I'm a GURU! I'm in the top 1% of people who know self-improvement, personal development, personal motivation, and spiritual growth. Am I earning like the gurus? Not right now, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I will be, and that I'll settle for nothing less!

That's the kind of mentality you need. Passion, enthusiasm, excitement! The constantly laid-back approach is for therapists, and I've met therapists who have degrees in psychology that know less about the inner workings of the human mind than I do.

I would like to say that I think the content on your website is solid. It provides value to people, and yes, patience is key... but while you're being patient, also remember your worth, and keep in mind that people want somebody who's magnetic, somebody to draw them toward that person - and that person is YOU.

Most people are going through life in something of a constant haze that lacks any semblance of clarity, and they require you to guide them and tell them what to do. Be the person who attracts them and changes their lives, because they'll become people who are so grateful, who tell all their friends, who build your business for you because of how you used your knowledgeable, wisdom, and enthusiasm to change their lives.

You can use my own website as an example.

Power Motivator: Incredible Power, Unlimited Success

When I started it I wasn't entirely certain how I wanted to speak, how I wanted to convey my information... but I STARTED, and that's important. I made an informative post each day, but then I felt like something was "off", and so I took a massive 16 hour mental bootcamp with a marketing master, and then right after, another 8 hour mental bootcamp with the same person. Two weeks and thousands of notes later, I know how to market, who to market to, and I have more clarity in my goals than I've had in the last three years.

You've done the hardest part. You've started. Now show the world who you are, and why they should listen to you. Be confident, be outstanding! Your website has more "flash" to it than mine already, and that's great! Mine has no pictures and no "About" page (Yet). You're on the right track, that's for sure, but you have to present yourself as an authority. If you don't, in about two years from now, do you know what the difference between somebody asking you for advice on self-improvement and somebody asking me, even if we gave them the exact same answer? About $5,000.

Get to the top. I'll meet you there.

Wow I wish my blog could look as good as yours....Just keep the faith man and in due time the visitors will come...

Just curious but what theme is that you are using?

I think you have a good start. Success will come with patience and hard work. It's a nice clean look, in my non-color coordinated, wouldn't know good design if it slapped me in the face opinion.

Where is your traffic coming from?

One comment is your signature says that the latest blog post is: Attract People to You & Your Business With The Impression of Increase and I have absolutely no clue what that is, what's in it for me, why should I click, etc.

Maybe some of your blog post titles need some copywriting 101 type headlines. Excite the visitor to read, to apply what they learn, to make comments, etc.

One other thing - make sure that every interaction here and elsewhere shows that YOU are in control of your OWN mindset, attitude, etc. Don't get involved in little tiffs like happened recently. People with a good mindset would avoid negative people - even those "jerks" as you say that make unnecessary comments. That's just my opinion - not saying who was right or who was wrong - I'm saying you shouldn't have let it get to you so much especially since you want to help people with their mindset.

My 2 cents. Good luck.

Mark

Use a swipe file for your headlines. I found that my open rates increase dramatically when I craft them like a copywriter rather than an article writer. Here's a good resource: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...wipe-file.html

Try shortening your paragraph structure. The info in them is good. Some paragraphs are little hard to read. Try keeping each paragraph less than 4 sentences long. (Got this from Joe Vitale's Hypnotic Writing books.)

Most paragraphs look good, though. Just some long ones here and there.

Also, bullets and quotes help break up the writing. Like, sabinavarga mentioned above.

If you've got the stones, try video blogs. They've been working for me so far. People will see you as more of an authority and they'll connect with you more.

Plus, people are more likely to buy from someone they know, like, and trust. (Got this from Robert Cialdini's Influence book) Videos can help bridge the gap.

And I'm sure you already know this because you're in the personal development field. But try not to focus on what's not working. Remember, what you focus on, expands. This is true with EVERYTHING, especially business.

Look at what is working. I see you have some posts that already have a few comments. Find the similarities of those articles and expand on them. You will find them, just keep digging.

I know you have a tendency to get passionate about a subject, bud. I've seen it first hand. Find a way to use that to ignite passion in your audience, and you'll open the floodgates.

For the life of me, I can't seem to find it. But Tim Ferriss did a talk on polarizing people in order to get them to either hate him or love him. As he considers middle ground to be death.

People will argue with each other over forums and blog posts. Skyrocketing his traffic. Either way, he wins.

Leveraging emotions is such a powerful tool. Look at how religions have used it to establish power. Just don't let it get the best of you.

You are someone that people look up to now. Act accordingly. Be the guy that people want to be. In the personal development niche, you can't afford not to.

And also remember that you can't please everyone. There are some people that will straight up hate you for no reason. Some people just will ignore you for no reason. Some people just don't care.

But that's OK. Everything's OK.

It's only not OK when you make a judgement that it's not.

Try this experiment...

Try tracking who opens your emails on a consistent basis. Send them a free report or something similar just as a way to say "thank you" to them for being active fans.

You can use a PLR ebook for this. Also, ask them what kind of content they want to see from you in the future.

Along the same lines. Find out who completely ignores your emails. Maybe the ones who haven't opened them for a good 6 weeks or so.

Send them an email that says that you've noticed they haven't opened any of your emails. And you don't like spamming anyone, so you will "do them the favor" of taking them off your list unless they respond.

Again, this is just shifting your focus away from what you don't want. To what you do want.

Either way, your blog is pretty. And like I said, the info is good. Even if you don't change anything, I'm sure you'll see more interaction in time.

Hope this helps.

To your success,

Jeff

My initial impression. This is my no-nonsense honest appraisal after visiting the home page and glancing around here and there, and scrolling and not actually reading much at first (as visitors often tend to do).

*I only visited for about 20-30 seconds and decided to come right back here and give my initial impression.

It's a very clean look and it appears you have a lot of valuable content. But what separates you from the pack is my question? There are so many personal development blogs and sites out there... you gotta grab me with something right away and I don't get that feeling off the bat. Also, maybe I'm too keen to it but I get the sense that the design has been modeled quite closely after Smart Passive Income?

*Ok I clicked through a post to see some inner content and read a little bit.

The content is very good. I don't feel like I am being hit with generic fluff meant to attract searchers off Google that typed some long tail keywords that you researched and thought you could rank well and bank on. Not that there's a problem with that in and of itself - if you have quality content to go with it. You have both quality content *and* you don't have ads screaming all over the place in positions optimized for click conversions and sales. In fact, now that I go look back at it, do you have ads at all?

*Clicked back and browsed some more, clicked over to your facebook page

Ok I see you have your fb page all set up. One thing I notice, no cover photo? Whats up with that? You have covered your bases in so many areas... gotta have a cover photo on facebook - better get to that

(And.... I see a Like for Smart Passive Income, possibly confirming my earlier suspicion..)

Only 8 Likes from others since you joined in July? Hmm I think you could do better than that. You have to engage on facebook. Not just post links to your blog articles and expect suddenly something will go viral. Go back to facebook and comment on other people's stuff (as Prosperity Clicks, not as your personal profile) and get involved. People will notice and give you a Like if you start Liking theirs and commenting on their stuff. Facebook likes and mentions can be highly reciprocal, but I have noticed on Facebook to get your own page out of the sub-1000 dungeon it takes a ton of initial work. Think 3-4 comments and Likes on others posts to achieve one Like on yours. This all of course depends on the quality of your comment on others posts and other factors too.

Overall I think your website comes across as slightly on the bland side, however it does seem that you do have great unique quality content underneath it all. I would suggest giving everything more of a personal touch... maybe more photos of yourself or something, I'm not sure how that might work for you or not.

Not trying to rip on your site at all, just trying to give you that completely honest no-b.s. response I think you're looking for.

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Bottom line - although you do have a very good thing started, I think you can do better. But you knew that didn't you?

I agree with Jeff about your headlines, and with 11811 about the social network activity growth, but again, I think it's great and I'm eager to hear how it grows in the NEAR future!

Anthony