Adventures in Lifestyle Design from a Path Less Traveled
Let’s Take Things to the Next Level Together :)
How’s your holiday season going?
Over here, 2011 is running out of time, and I’m left thinking about some plans for 2012.
I have an idea I’d like to float by you and see what you think.
It seems I have a strange fatal flaw that naturally pulls me toward extremely challenging situations. Like when I started this blog, I devoted a whole year to working on making money online (I wrote about it from week 7 through week 52).
I never talked about this, but back before I even got the domain name for this blog, I had this strange little blog called 365 Cubes where I was trying to design a small dwelling that could fit inside a 20 foot cube every single day for an entire year. Designing one of these dwellings is a painfully common design school exercise, and for some reason challenging myself to do it for a whole year seemed like something fun.
I ended up giving this up after the hassle of scanning, cropping, and uploading all the images from my sketchbook proved to be more of a pain than it was worth (plus, no one read that blog anyway and all my friends were annoyed that I had to go home to draw or scan stuff all the time).
In December I have a goal to write one guest blog post every day. That’s 31 guest posts in 31 days.
This of course is completely unrealistic. December is only halfway done, and I’ve only written about 7 or so guest posts. I’m going to need to be very productive to catch up (especially with all those holidays positioned at the end of the month).
But you know what? Even if I fail, I’ve still already written more guest posts than I ever have.
Anyway, I have this odd masochistic love of challenges. Maybe I’m just crazy, but I think challenges can really help people push their comfort zone and get them to move beyond limitations that may be holding them back.
I really wanted 2011 to be my “break out” year, but due to a lot of bizarre things with Google, things really haven’t panned out the way I wanted them to be.
But I’ve done my best to adapt and now I’m serious and ready to make sure that 2012 is my “break out” year.
I’ve decided to do a series of monthly challenges in 2012 to really take my online business to the next level.
Whatever small following this blog may have is probably due to my one year challenge or my traffic experiment earlier this year. But I think that those were flawed because it ended up being just me working on the challenge by myself, while a lot of other people sat on the sidelines and watched, wondering if this whole thing would become an inspirational story or like watching a train wreck in slow motion (I’m still not sure which one this blog is…).
That’s why I’d like to invite you to take your business to the next level with me in 2012.
Here’s What I’m Thinking…
I like the name “10×10 Online Success Group.” The name 10×10 appeals to the designer part of me (plus, it gives me yet another chance to rip off the title of a design book, like I did with the Benefiting from Bangkok Manifesto).
I’m thinking of doing 10 monthly challenges and committing myself to applying myself 10 times more in each of those areas for the month (hence the name 10×10).
If we did this, I think it would be hard for us to NOT be pretty well off from all our online mischief.
What do you think? Is that something you’d want to do? The whole thing would be free. I’d just write a blog post once a week or so and we could check in with each other and keep each other accountable.
Some ideas for challenges might be:
- Building an email list
- Buying traffic
- Social media / Viral marketing
- Video marketing
- Crafting an effective autoresponder followup series
- Improving conversion rates
- Getting more personality into your blog or website (crafting a USP)
- Getting more reader interaction on your blog
- Outsourcing
- Joint ventures and partnerships
…just to name a few that I’m thinking of.
I’m not even thinking of starting this until January, but right now, I’m just curious if anyone would be interested in joining me in this, kicking your business up to the next level, and making this online thing work no matter what.
So, if you think this is something you might be interested in and you want to hold your feet to the fire to succeed in 2012, just leave a comment down below and tell me an area you’d be most interested in improving in your business (traffic, SEO, conversions, visitor engagement, etc.). I’m just trying to get some ideas :)
Then, if enough people are interested in this, we’ll go ahead with it :)
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I’m interested! I’d love to see an increase in monthly revenue (is that fair – wouldn’t everyone?!). If that’s a little too obvious (or not specific enough) than I’d like this year to be the year I create an elephant website instead of a street vendor site (I was really inspired by that blog post).
@Joe, Thanks for the comment. I’m glad that blog post left an impression on you. That is definitely something I’m going to be writing more about in the future (as I learn about it myself). I’ve already got a few seeds of ideas for things to experiment with. Of course, I’ll share everything here once I have the results :)
Clayton, it took me 1 hour just to get through this post! I got distracted and totally forgot about it when I got on the 365 cubes site. Spent a long time looking at all those designs and imagining myself living in some of them! I don’t know much about architecture or design (other than a bit at school) but some of them are amazing man!
Anyway, I’d definitely be down for the challenge. I’ve already been planning a massive (4 posters stuck together) written plan for my progress next year. It’s sort of like a timeline of what I will achieve by when and how I intend to get there (step by step). I’ve stuck it on my wall in my room/office so I see it whenever I wake up, go to sleep, and work. Keeps me directed, but most importantly acts as a constant reminder of my priorities. And I just modify it when I want to change stuff.
So far, I have a few columns for different sites, and have the steps required to take it from where it is, to where I want it to be (in terms of search engines, revenue and even invoked sentiment by the audience). Then I break each step down into the time frame I reckon I can do it within, and put the “due dates” down. This part is optional, but I also have a daily diary, which I will be syncing to the poster to keep me progressing.
Just thought I’d share that with all, it’s really great (been using it for other areas in life that I want to improve within, on a much smaller scale though) and it’s a lot like goal setting, but just taking it to the next level.
So yeah, I reckon I could modify them to be 10 general goals and I’d definitely be interested.
Cheers,
Ashton
@Ashton, Cool! Sounds like you you just might be as crazy as I am :) All this online business stuff is challenging, but if you keep focusing on the desired outcome it will all pay off in the end (at least that’s what everyone seems to say…). I’ve made goal statements, I’ve photoshopped earnings screenshots for inspiration, I’ve done it all, dude! Let’s see if it pays off in 2012 :)
Hi Clayton I would definately be keen ! Sounds like a great idea. Interested in anything that helps an affiliate website run well and make good profits. Thanks ! Keep up the great work.
Kinds regards
Fleur
@Fleur, Thanks for commenting. Yeah, profits are always good :)
Clayton, just write two or three posts for a few days and you can not only catch up, but build a cushion for the holidays. (I use this all the time in NaNoWriMo.) If you really want to do 31 posts, I think you can still do it. After all, it’s not like they all have to be 1667 words ;)
Good luck with your challenge! Some of the ideas for next year sound interesting, too, though I’m not crazy about the buying traffic idea. Good luck in the new year!
@Grady, Thanks. yeah, the problems is really about running out of ideas to write about and finding blogs that seem to have enough traffic to make it worth the effort. I’m going after top-tier blogs and I guess I feel a little anxious about making sure my content is top notch.
BTW, paid traffic scares me too. I’ve been looking into remarketing, which seems to be very high ROI…
Hi Clayton!
I’m so tired that I want to start 2012 with a solid rest – empty my mind before filling it with something productive and interesting…
@Anton, I totally know what you mean! I’ve been working around the clock lately, but unfortunately, there’s not time for me to take a solid rest yet :)
I’m new at blogging. and I’m quickly finding out when it comes to the discipline of writing blogs for my Military reunion website. Sometimes I feel like I need a boot camp drill instructor,since to keep me on track.
I rarely make comments but one thing that really captured my attention was your feelings about your goal/blog/web site … that statement really hit a chord with me!
“flawed because it ended up being just me working on the challenge by myself, while a lot of other people sat on the sidelines and watched, wondering if this whole thing would become an inspirational story or like watching a train wreck in slow motion (I’m still not sure which one this blog is…)”.
My website’s Main goal is for a reunion of my shipmates that have served on the US Coast Guard cutter Sherman in the 42 years she has been commissioned , I won’t go into all the details but to be a success. we need to build a critical mass of members. So it’s all about networking, having interesting content, clear goals, and yes basically I need to learn about the best methods of “selling” these goals to the membership and enlisting their support. But I feel the same way you mentioned above – I’m working and everybody else is watching. My feeling is I need to crank up my efforts in all departments.
So yes I’m up for a challenge in 2012 … to learn all I can, stay focused on and clarify my goals and achieve more self discipline.
Richard
@Richard, Thanks for commenting. I rarely comment on other blogs myself these days since I’m so busy with other things.
That’s a great goal to bring together a bunch of old shipmates. I personally feel that there is a huge lack of any solid sense of community these days and I think that anything that works to bring others together is a truly noble cause.
[...] so I’ve gotten some positive feedback for the 10×10 thing (getting a group of people together who are interested in challenging themselves to do 10 things 10 [...]
I must be the only one who read this blog and did not understand a word of it.
Sorry but true
@Mike, Sorry you don’t understand me. This blog isn’t for everyone. Apparently it’s not for you.
Would like to join you in carrying out experiments to learn the different aspects of it as I’ve not covered it all :P
@Lilian, Hi. I haven’t seen you around in a while. Hope you’re doing well. Thanks for the comment.