The idea is to share with you some of the wonderful things about the online life.

The week ending Sunday October 25^th 2009

We begin the Week in Review with the big story, the release of Windows 7 on engadget. Thursday’s rollout was met with Windows 7 Launch parties and all sorts of fanfare. The real test is on now as expectations are high. Minimally, this OS has to outpace the ever- poor performance of Vista and live up to it’s security claims.

Using Windows 7 already and ready to tinker? Here are 21 Ways to Customize Windows 7 (slideshow)

Want to know what people are saying about Windows 7? Check out the Live Feed

Stops along the way

The Blog World Expo was held last week and John Chow put up a nice Day 1 video from his vantage point.

More articles of interests

Reaching your competitors links by Robert Bravery

State of the Blogosphere 2009 by Jen McLean

Advanced Blog Commenting Tricks by Zemalf

On the OBB

How To Avoid The home-based Business Blues

Social Networking Sites – The Alarm is Sounding, Is Anyone Listening?

RSS Feeds, What Are They?

Enjoy the reading and have a great week ahead

During your travels, stop by my page or catch me on

This 3^rd article in the “The Blogging Life” series focuses on reinforcing the commitment to do what is necessary to move your business forward. This can be quite a challenge, if for no other reason than the fact that establishing an online business is not an easy task during the early months of blogging.

Many become discouraged after having blogged for numerous months without any measurable gain in traffic or readership. This is the time when some bloggers begin to second guess themselves, wondering if they have chosen a dead-end career that will only continue to frustrate them.

But in reality, this is exactly the time to reinforce your commitment and crank out more content. It’s time to step up your game. Creating great content is a very important component that must be accomplished if you are to have any chance at standing out from the crowd.

People like to read things that they can relate to and has a level of value to them at this point in their life.

As an example, if you are struggling with a particular aspect of life and you can read an article that fully understands your position, and provides a solution to your problem, that’s a highly valuable article.

You’ll be very happy that you ran across such an article, and will likely put the solution to use so that you can solve the problem and move forward.

This may well be the time in your blogging life that a renewed commitment to your overall goal will allow you to turn the corner, heading toward success.

Let’s face it; blogging is not an easy career path. This probably explains why the ranks of the highly successful bloggers remain relatively thin in comparison to all of the bloggers out there.

It’s like a college athlete trying to go pro. They hit a wall at some point because the challenge is much greater than what they are used to and more than what they had anticipated.

What was your anticipation when you started blogging?

Did you think it was as simple as writing a post a few times a week and throwing some ads on the page in hopes of making sales?

This blog for instance, is not a hobby blog; it’s about building a professional blogging business that generates tens of thousands of dollars annually. The ultimate goal is to Become a Six Figure Blogger while controlling my own destiny.

You see, once you realize just how hard it is to build your blog into a money generating business, you’ll begin to have questions.

Do I have the time and energy for this?

The answer is a resounding “yes”, if you truly want to become a professional blogger. You must make the time and generate the energy because to do so, will someday pay the dividends you now seek.

Sure, many have come and gone in the business of blogging and that’s not because blogging for a living doesn’t work, it’s because those bloggers 1, saw the great difficulty ahead and decided it wasn’t for them or 2, never reinforced their commitment and turned away from their overall goal.

They quit!

Like anything else, if you are committed to taking on any and all associated tasks, regardless of the level of difficulty, and staying with your plan, success will come.

Reinforce that commitment to success, take the required actions to advance to the next level and enjoy a happy blogging career.

With a multitude of tasks to accomplish momentum is very important to your success. The problem becomes finding that momentum in the first place.

In order to generate momentum, you must continually have accomplishments, for without them, you have a feeling of going nowhere fast. During your early days of blogging you will often feel overwhelmed as you are a one-man show.

This is where your organizational skills come in. You must keep a listing of goals and the associated tasks to reach them. Once you accomplish a string of these in the timeframe that you have established, you begin to feel a sense of momentum because you are in fact moving forward with your plan.

This sense of momentum is a direct result of your productivity and you must now build upon what you have started. There is no time to enjoy the moment, for to do so will cause you to lose the momentum that you have worked so hard to obtain.

Productivity is the key. You see, it’s the classic “catch-22″. To gain any momentum you have to be productive. To maintain any momentum gained… you get the point.

So how do you remain productive, thus gathering momentum?

As mentioned above, keep a listing of tasks.

Plan ahead of time. I’ve found this to be critical to knowing what lies ahead of you. You MUST know where you are going.

Fact: If you don’t know where you’re going, nobody’s going with you!

I layout my task listings 2 days in advance, which allows me to maintain a mindset of urgency. It also gives you at least 1 plan already developed and loaded into your queue in case one of life’s circumstances gets in the way and there is no time to layout another. Once you have developed 2, just replace the second one daily as you move forward.

Do not wait until the day that the work is to be done to develop the task list. Your productivity time has now taken a hit because you now have to use some of that time getting it together. Avoid this at all costs when possible.

My system is simple. I use a bullet list, leaving spaces for notes and comments. For clarity and increased focus, I will sometimes print this out and review the plan.

Whatever system you use, it is important to be consistent and make this a part of your daily routine. As I have said many times before, blogging is a business, whether you intend to make money or not. It must be approached with a level of seriousness.

Develop your daily routines and you’ll be well on your way to generating the momentum that is imperative to maintaining a serious blog. Your productivity level will rise without you even noticing it.

Apply this concept of momentum building now and you will be rewarded later in your blogging life.

If you’d like to share an experience you may reach me via the contact page above or leave a comment below.

A longtime friend and I had lunch recently to catch up on the times. The normal course of conversation between buds turned to the subject of the internet. I installed a couple of plugins for him some time ago, so I knew he had been blogging as a hobbyist for quite awhile. I would always ask how things were going and offer a little help, if needed.

So I asked him when he was going to stop “hobbying around” and make a run at bringing his blog up to date. He’s still on his launch version of WordPress, version number unmentioned to protect the guilty.

By the way, he knows I was going to write this article and he’s cool with that.

Anyhow, things turned a bit more serious when he confessed that he was “stuck”. Stuck? After all of this time, how can I help?

It turns out that he has become so frustrated with the effort and the lack of reward that he has all but abandoned the hobby he once enjoyed. It’s no longer fun and the love is gone and he is simply standing at the crossroads.

He doesn’t know if he will continue and has been on an extended “break”. He told me that he has taken a couple of blogging courses, purchased books, read other blogs and downloaded a large collection of ebooks.

What he didn’t say was that he was actually taking some action on what he’s been reading. Instead, he now has a serious decision to make.

To make a long story short, that is a common occurrence among many bloggers.

Reading every blog and ebook without applying anything that’s being taught is a disaster. By the time you read it all, you’ve forgotten the first action steps that will allow you a measure of accomplishment. This is information overload, pure and simple.

This will always leave you frustrated and standing at the crossroad, trying to decide whether to continue the journey, or call it off and go home.

You must take action as you advance through your learning experience. This is what really makes the information sink in. Nothing like actually gaining the experience from performing the task at hand.

It all begins with establishing a routine, a schedule or some plan that you regularly execute. Focus on what needs to be done.

Here’s a few tips for getting out of the gate;

• Treat it like a job – When you are working on your blog, rid yourself of those time-eroding distractions in your home office. Have some phone silence time and tell the family that you are unavailable for a period of time.

• Silence that HDTV - You’d best turn off the television, otherwise you will be listening with one ear and find yourself pulled away from your work.

• Forget about that email - Your inbox may be a mess but it will have to wait until another time. This is not why you have set aside “blogging time”.

• Surf with caution - If the material you need requires some research on the internet, be certain to only visit the sites necessary to obtain what you need. No drive-bys.

• Use that printer - When you locate the information you are searching for, print it (within reason). This allows you to disengage from the computer and the internet while you read through the material.

• Stay organized - Lengthy PDFs and reports should be filed electronically. Establish a filing system on your computer where you can quickly and easily locate your blog related materials.

• One thing at a time - This one’s tough, but remain on a single task when possible. Better to start and finish one task than to start and leave three incomplete.

• Set time limits - There is no need to run yourself into the ground cramming information until 1am, establish a time that you will be “off” from work. Mark you progress so that you can pick up from there tomorrow. Get your rest.

You must control your situation in order to be fresh and as productive as you can. It’s a slow process and blogging requires a good deal of commitment, but if you stay the course, you will see measurable progress in time.

This progress will serve to motivate you to continue, bringing some excitement to blogging.

Hey, if you’re not going to enjoy this profession than you may want to consider something else.

Back to my ole pal, I’m feeling good about his renewal. He has structured periods of time to perform blogging tasks and I’m happy about that. You see, he really likes working online it’s just that his overexposure to information had led him to a place where he became unsure of which direction to take.

Many bloggers have arrived at that intersection, and many have taken the exit ramp, leaving abandoned blogs and websites behind.

We bloggers have to stick together so that we all remain on-point!