Journal
Some industrial sounds…. Laibach – 2525
Gloomy futuristic, almost Orvelian future described in the tune that leaves you without breath. In a way Laibach only knows how to portray. In fact, I am a big fan of Laibach, and have been on their performance on Exit festival, on Jelen Live Festival and on Beer Fest in Belgrade, a couple of years ago, if not even last year.
Laibach is anti establishment kind of group. It’s more of a movement than a music band. They love to parade in fancy quazi Nazi german / socialist uniforms. They are opression fighters, and their word play will leave most establishments, even those who represent themselves as freedom fighters (khm USA khm).
If you want to read more about Laibach you should go to their website or watch some documentary. All of their music is freely available on Deezer.
I would recommend a couple of songs to start with:
Volk – Americana
Volk – Anglia
Wat – B Mashina (Slovenian version)
Don't blog for money?! Should we blog for thin air instead?
So this guy said something like this: “Never do blogging for money because it creates a bad impression among your community.” This is one of the dumbest blogging advice I’ve heard in quite a while. What are you going to blog for? For thin air? Either way you put it, you are blogging for gain.
I can’t comperhand these kind of counter intuitive advice. Yes, blog about what you love, and blog with passion, if you want to build a thriving business. But I know people out there who’ve built websites from scratch, about the things that they aren’t passionate about, and they are earning tons.
Don’t blog for money is one the biggest bullshit that Internet Marketers will sell you. It’s their way of putting it, you are going to do this because you love it, while you pay for my crash course test for money making blogging, while you don’t earn a dime. And you don’t earn a dime, because they are not competent enough to transfer you knowledge.
Be careful with advice from “Make Money” niche
Most of the bloggers who talk about making money, aren’t making a dime in return. This is why I steered clear from that niche. If there is any blogger who is competent to write on making money online, that would be Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income. He started earning in another niche, and capitlized properly.
Any make money coach you choose should be a person who already did it. A person who is a leader and delivers the results primarily for himself. One of those people is Ed Dale, as well.
These two guys are straight up telling you that you need to build your empire through something that you love doing. For example, my Alpha Efficiency blog is generating revenue. And yes, I am blogging for money. If you are good at something never do it for free.
And there are benefits if I am earning money while I am blogging. It will help me evade some of my life expenses and generate more free time for, yep you guessed it: creating more great content for my readers.
Do I care about the bad impression that it leaves in my community? Well my community wouldn’t mind me asking for a donation or take action based on my recommendation. I never ever recommend something if I am not using it myself. But if I recommend something do I do it for money or for the good will?
Money is a powerful motivator
Yep, money equals results in todays world. The main goal of any corporation out there is: “To deliver value to the customer and maximize profits”. Plain and simple. Companies wouldn’t operate if they didn’t make money. And if you go through your life as a business, you will also treat your blog like a business. Businesses make money. Not only blogging for money is legitimate, it’s also encouraged if you live your life on the good terms?
Does it make you greedy? Hell, no. You are a hard working person, and everyone who works hard deserves to be paid. Blogging is not a conventional “job”. And you can’t represent yourself as a professional blogger, if you are not doing it for a living. Profession makes you a living.
Conclusion
Online gurus and writers have a lots of smarts under their buckle belt. But unfortunately a lot of information is pure bullshit. Internet did really increase the freedom of speech, but that doesn’t mean that some people, still need to shut the f*** up.
Analytics and SEO rebuilding
For some reason, I love Jetpack stats. They are inside of the WordPress, and I have one tab less to open. But it seems to be my laziness. This time I want to spend more time in Google analytics, as it gives me more overview on what happens with my visits, and how they reach Alpha Efficiency.
Forming a new habit
Now, I know I am a quick analytics junkie, just in order to make myself feel good about the traffic that occurred the previous day, but Analytics is called Analytics for a reason. To give you insight and new ideas on your content. And I actually did get “fresh” ideas, and insights into how much my articles are read. And what articles need some more love.
Unoptimized content
I believe that lately I’ve been creating a lot of great content, but I don’t feel as if I pulled the maximum revenue from it for me. Republishing some of the old articles on social media and optimizing it for Google a little bit.
No matter how much I hate Google…
It is still my main source of traffic! More than 75% of my visits come through Google and that is depressing. My plan is to diversify my traffic sources through other venues. Because this makes my business vulnerable to algorythm changes, and that doesn’t make a solid business.
Work music…
Guys at Asian Efficiency wrote a great piece on work music, where they reminded me of all the great sound tracks out there that are really good working music. It is inspiring and heart lifting, stimulating your inspiration, while not distracting you from the task at hand. Currently I am listening to the music from Steve Jablonsky, that was written for Transformers, and it puts me in a role of a person who is doing something incredibly important, in the terms of an epic historical event.
The emphasis of emotions is important for your workflow. And soundtracks are perfect for it.