Steve Mills - Online Entrepreuership with the SPOKE system

The revolYOUtion part 4: Evolve a Niche

The internet is full of advice. Some of it is fantastic, it makes you leap of your chair and start making plans to change the world. Some of it makes you sit back and think, to re-evaluate your current strategies and consider a different outlook. Some of it is just not very good.

There is a lot of talk on blogs, and especially those that are concerned with internet marketing about finding a niche and attracting traffic. The theory goes that you find a topic, or just a set of keywords that people are searching for, put up a long sales page site or 10 article blog, then slap adsense on the page to monetise it. I am sure that everyone reading this blog has seen the advice before. I am sure that this strategy would have worked great for the first 10,000 people that tried it. That is, until all of the good keywords were used up, and competition for them became tighter and tighter. This of course leads to an escalation in the amount of resources that people spend (Pay per click dollars, advertising, time) in order to get traffic to their “niche” site. Before you know it the profitable little niche that you found has been done to death by all of the “me too’s” and want to be’s. The model isn’t sustainable. It’s no way to build a business that has any long term future, or turn into a saleable asset.

To really get a niche and have a sustainable blog or online business you need to find a niche that no-one can copy easily, one that has a barrier of entry a bit higher then all the rest.

Here is another perspective : Do you think Darren at problogger, or Yaro at Entreprenuers Journey had a plan when they started? I don’t think so. Go back and read the archives for those sites, as recently as 18 months ago and see how different they are from the entities that you see today. In terms of presentation, topics, site direction, comments, overall theme they are quite different from now. The only consistency I can see is the strong personality of the great guys that run those sites. They both are confident enough in themselves to let the blog evolve to meet the different selection pressures of the internet at the time, what people are after, what other bloggers are doing.

What you need to do is write about things from your perspective, different things, new things. Start something fresh. You need to EVOLVE a niche, start of writing about what you love, and see what people react to, what they want more of, what they can’t stand. Listen to your comments, link to those that are like you, and also those which stimulate opinion, counter-opinion and genuine new thought about the areas that you are talking about.

By doing this you will create a whole new genre of blog, one that with time and effort people will be attracted too because of it’s differences, not it’s similarities to other blogs.

I have made this article part of my revolYOUtion series because the same principles can be applied to your life. Evolve the life you want, one gradual step a time. Look at your long term goals, and inch towards them day by day. Some days you may make a drastic leap forward, other days all you might do is write one email that has something to do with you end goal. But just keep progressing forward, changing your strategy to suit the time, place and situation that you find yourself in at the moment. Look for the niche in life, the place where you get value and reward for being you.

The revolYOUtion Part 3: Spread Free Wisdom

Being Monday I thought that I would share a little bit of blogging inspiration that I have been pondering over the weekend.

One of the best things about blogging is that allows you to interact with people in ways that have been quite hard to do in the past. Before the internet (a time which seems hard for people to really remember what it was like, even now) it could take weeks, even months of knowing someone fairly closely before they would discuss what was really on their mind with you. People would generally stick to the social norm in their personal reactions, before they would open up and talk about life in general , or how their business works, or their spiritual views. Now people are quite free to share it online, and the power of the net allows people to share wisdom of their experience with each other.

Sure there has been newspapers, encyclopaedias, television, radio, reference books and a plethora of other media around in the past. But nothing so immediate, nothing so reactionary or so pro-active. Nothing that had the possibility to give a voice to everyone like online social media. It has allowed people to do the most powerful thing that thinking beings can do. It has allowed us to spread free wisdom. Not pass on the accepted view, but to tell the world that this is how you see it, and why that is so.

Think of all of the fantastic things that you have learned about online, new skills that you have acquired and new possibilities for your life that you would not have seen if you didn’t read blogs. If you are a blogger, think about all of the interesting things, skills and acquired wisdom that you have shared with the world by blogging. You would have :

* Drastically reduced the time or mistakes that someone would make in acquiring a new skill
* Shown someone the world through the eyes of another, giving them a viewpoint that they otherwise would never have seen.
* Allowed two people to connect via your site, allowing them to share wisdom with each other.

Wisdom is knowledge that has been tested in the real world, it is the real “this is what happens when you do this”, rather then only just what you have read in theory.

That’s why I consider the current state of the internet, and the new wave of bloggers to be one of the most important developments in media, society and the way we view “work” in the future. Allowing people to make money by sharing their viewpoints, expressing themselves, giving the world access to the collected wisdom of their years. This is giving true value to society, this is work that makes a difference. Not cooping people up for 12 hours straight in an office, mindlessly pushing meaningless figures from one side of a spreadsheet to the other. I want to see this work for more people, i want to see as many people as possible making money online, at least earning enough to give them the motivation to continue to tell it as they see it, to let me and everyone else into the world of their wisdom.

Share your wisdom with the world, it is really the most important thing you can do.

The RevolYOUtion part 2 : The Real Self Mastery

This blog is not about being successful in the usual meaning of the term. It is not about making more money then everyone else, having more stuff, or a more powerful career.

You don’t want to have a life that is optimized for the attainment of only one goal, you want to have a balanced one. Think about it, the person that works all the time, putting everything into a career misses out on enjoying the everyday, time with his kids or partner as well as their true friends. They have no time to spend doing things they enjoy. You are not here for one purpose only, you are here to experience a wide range of things, and to find meaning in the variety of life.

There is a real fear in people that if they drop the ball for a second, if they just relax and put say 80% of their waking time, and especially their mental energy, into a job instead of 100% that everything will fall apart. This does not only apply to people in the workforce with career aspirations. The same can be said of stay at home parents, students or those that have time consuming responsibilities. Taking a bit of time for you that is outside of the normal routine is not letting yourself or anyone else down.

It’s important for your mental health and sense of self worth.

Why don’t you try a little experiment. Just for this week, if you normally take work home to do at night, just don’t do it. I know that it will be hard, very hard for some people to resist the temptation to at least look at their work email, but resist it. It’s only for a week after all. At the end of the week see if there has been any difference at all to your overall productivity.
If there is a marked decrease in the work that you have done, and it is really suffering, then go back to the way it was and re-evaluate something else. BUT, if there is no difference at all, if everyone is happy with your output and no-one seems to notice then guess what, you just completed a life experiment, and you learned something valuable. You have in effect given yourself an extra hour or two in the day to do what you want, to NGTD as I like to say.

You have a mental ecology that needs to remain in balance or it will do things to restore the balance itself. Like burn out, or stress you to the point where you are so unhappy that you must slow down.
Sure, you can burn the midnight oil for a while, as I have been know to do for up to a month at a time, but keep it up and you will pay the price. You might get that promotion, or 10,000 visitors a day to your site.

Don’t take this as a defeatist attitude, like “what’s the point of hard work, it only results in other problems.” Realise that your life is a system, and it is comprised of a lot of subsystems, one of them being the work system. You, as an intelligent human being have the ability to make a choice. You can determine which of these systems get the most attention. You have the ability with a bit of self reflection to see which one is lacking and why. The “out of control” feeling when we have too much going on in our life is just that, there is one of these sub systems that have got out of control. Only you have the power to put it back where it belongs.

Don’t’ let the systems control you, have control of the systems. This is real self mastery

Not Getting Things Done Part 2; YOUtime

One of my new readers Kat has brought up the point in a comment that I think is relevant to a lot of people.

“This makes perfect sense. I’ve been realizing this lately and just myself away from my computer and work to relax or go outside. However, one thing that I want to learn is how to balance my time more effectively so that I can get those personal chores that I’ve been wanting to do get done. When I get home from work after a 10 hour day..I usually sit in front of my computer and mindlessly surf instead of the unpacking the many boxes I’ve had sitting around for months, cleaning up my office or any other personal tasks I’ve been wanting to do. I carry this heavy guilty feeling with me when I know I should just get those things done.”

Guilt about not doing things is a hard issue. I am a big proponent of being able to switch off at some part of the day and do something that is meaningful to you , that recharges your mental and emotional batteries. Sometimes we need to do things in order to pay the bills or honor a previous commitment to something or somebody. When we put these “must do” activities off by mindlessly doing an activity that in the end leaves us with no sense of accomplishment, relaxation, or enjoyment we are encouraging these feelings of guilt.

The Not Getting Things Done idea is to do things that break this routine. In fact you should give yourself the freedom to always break your routine. The need to escape and the resultant feeling of guilt can stem from the fact that we feel trapped in a routine, and no matter what work we do on pressing tasks, there will always be more chores to fill their place. To take Kats example, the next night she should just break the routine and get something on her list of chores done. The next perhaps go for a walk, or do something new. The night after that she won’t feel the monotony and boredom because she is expressing the free part of her personality. Actually exercising some choice, or feeling a sense of novelty and excitement of doing something new, or accomplishing something that has real personal value.

The NGTD ( sorry for the acronym, but it makes typing it quicker) series of articles is going to focus on the idea of freedom being the thing that is lacking in your life. You don’t want to exact control and routine on everything you do. You want to be free, you want life to throw good unexpected events at you. I am developing the idea of fostering this randomness in your life, in order to produce variations in the set routine and encourage you to grow, and develop and experience life. Big claims I know, but I think that I can back it up.

At the end of the day, ask yourself the question. Who are you working for?

At the very least, I will tell myself the truth.

I know the subtitle of this page “Start the revolYOUtion” sounds a bit like motivational speaker talk, and for that I apologise. You know the sort that pumps people up with meaningless catch phrases for an hour or two, brainwashing you with ideas that don’t hold water the next day. This is not my intention. I think that I may even change the subtitle in the near future when something a bit better comes into my head.

What I want from this blog, and from the RevolYOUtion series of articles is for people, myself especially, to take a good look at themselves and find the truth in the everyday. Not some esoteric spiritual enlightenment, not some hidden conspiracy, or wild way of making a million dollars. The truth I am talking is about is the way that all of the systems that make up your life interact, and what your place in them is. The truth I am talking about is the way of finding the truth for YOU.

Science has got itself a mighty bad rap over the past 30 years, especially as something to base your life around. No one wants to be a nerd that isn’t already one, and there seems to be a pride that people take in being ignorant in areas such as Maths, Biology, Physics and Chemistry. This is a shame, because there is a lot that can be said for the idea of scientific method.

The power of the scientific method is that it allows people to find the truth, and to build on the truths of others. The scientific method, or science itself, isn’t a set of beliefs per se, it a way of discerning the truth via observation, measurement and calculation.

We have all heard the saying that “The truth will set you free.” It is a very powerful statement. When you can see the truth, or what you can see is an accurate representation of the truth, it gives you the power to create a realistic model of what is really happening in the world. It is this idea that will help you the most with living your life in the long term. Not a catch phrase, personal development course, money making scheme, “power of attraction” idea like the secret or other next big thing. If you see how the pieces fit with clarity then you are already ahead of the pack. It allows you to better predict the course that events will take, allows you to keep your eyes open for untruths which can exploit you. No one goes driving or to a foreign country without a map, or at least asking reliable people for directions and reading the signs. Don’t trust the ideas of every crackpot out there, please evaluate them with an honest eye and test them against what you already know. AND, if someone says that they have all of the answers, be extremely sceptical.

The other key idea in keeping a scientific view of these systems in your life is that it allows you to admit that you are wrong. As hard as you try, you really can’t lie to yourself forever. If the facts as the world are presenting them to you are different from your view of reality, then take note. Adjust your beliefs and models to fit the new data. How many businesses, and therefore financial lives of people have been ruined just because the market has changed, or demand just isn’t there, but the business owner just persists and persists because they have been taught to “believe in themselves.” There has to be a better way, and I hope that this exploration will help people to think for themselves. I don’t want anybody to find the truth through this, I want people to find the method of finding their own truth. I want to teach them to fish for truth, and to throw back all those truths that don’t stand up to honest inquiry. I don’t want them to be provided the truth by anyone wholesale. Think for yourself.

People get into motivational thought and personal developments because they are fun. They have a need in their life for ideas that will break them out of their current situation, and these can be a physical change like actually changing jobs, or exercising etc. Or there are also people that do it for the mental change, the escapism, the fantasy, the “one day it can be me” thinking about attaining some glorious goal in the future. There seems to be innate human tendency to believe the person on the front, to go along with the story that they are telling you and to by default believe it. This guy says that he made 10 million just by setting up basic websites and using adsense, wow that could be me! This guy says that he found god by sitting there for 10 hours a day for 6 years, wow if only I did that it could be me!

Sure, some things are fun, and I am all for the promotion of fun for fun sake, but I don’t think it is wise to pursue Multi Level Marketing scheme after Scheme, over and over again, hoping one day that you will get the “true answer” and find the winning formula. People that continually invest time and money into things, that when you really look into them have a fantastically minimal chance of succeeding, and then wonder why they find themselves unfulfilled have only themselves to blame. Here a statement

“I will not make a rich man out of a liar”

When you see that truth, you can see the real reason you are unhappy, the reason why your job sucks, or the financial position that you are currently in is unsatisfactory. Don’t have undefined wants, have clear goals, and be clear about why you have those goals and how you will define that you have achieved them.