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How To Stay In The “Flow” State For Blogging

Keeping yourself in a state of “flow” is important if you want to make a habit out of blogging. This can be challenging, especially if you’re unsure of your direction. Ideally choose a topic you can become obsessively passionate about. That way, you’ll never run out of ideas to blog about.

But it’s also important to set up your daily routine to help you maintain consistency. If you’re all over the place with your daily routine, it’s going to be tough keeping up with a blogging practice. I find a good routine for me is to blog first thing in the morning. If I have a late night, or drink too much alcohol, it massively effects my ability to be creative and stay consistent.

Consistency is what you want with your blogging. Successful bloggers have made a habit out of posting blogs regularly.

How To Stay In The “Flow” State For Blogging

First, you have to “get” into the flow state. The flow state is a state of mind where you are consistently creative enough to keep writing blog posts. In this state, ideas come to you easily, and you write freely. To help you find the state of flow, choose a topic you can easily write about. Ideally it should align with a passion or interest you can consistently come up with ideas for. If you find yourself getting stuck then it could be you’ve chosen the wrong topic.

Of course your environment has a part to play too. Make sure it’s tidy and you’re not distracted by clutter – a tidy space means a tidy mind and although I like a bit of mess at times, it definitely effects my ability to focus on the task in hand and come up with ideas.

I also find social media a distraction. So if you’re spending hours scrolling your feed, ask yourself whether it adds or subtracts from the flow state you want to maintain. I’m a big fan of psychology books and often get ideas from them for my blog posts. So keeping a book on the go which inspires me definitely helps.

I also read other blog posts when I’m coming up with ideas for my blogs. If I’m not certain of my blog post I’ll scour the internet looking for inspiration.

How To Stay In The Flow State For Blogging – Why Consistency Is Key

Consistency is key to blogging and if you don’t keep up your blog habit, your traffic will dwindle and die! But before you can make it a habit, you must start! If you’re struggling getting stated with blogging, the first thing you should do is look at your state of mind. Ask yourself what mental baggage are you carrying? Spend some time clearing your mental space with some meditation. Are you in a state of panic? If so this definitely won’t help you in your creativity.

I find I work best in a calm and relaxed state of mind, but you will find your own “perfect” state with a bit of practice. You might even find a little bit of fear helps you get going! Here’s a few things I use to help me reach my best blogging mental state for productivity:

Meditation
Reading a book about my topic, or something inspiring
Clearing your workspace
Reading blog posts about your topic for ideas
Listening to music and lifting your “vibe”
Exercise

Not Feeling It? Shift Your “Vibe”

Remember some days just aren’t blogging days. So on those days I like to strategise about potential future blogs. Or focus on some other activity which moves my online business forwards, such as paid advertising, video or just research.

Find books which cover your area of interest. I’m personally a big fan of the self help genre and often use them for my blog posts in one way or another.

If you’re struggling with your affiliate business I always find it helpful to detach from it and work on myself. This could be doing some form or exercise, setting goals, journalling, reading or writing out my gratitude journal.

Here’s a post on the power of gratitude for an affiliate business. I think a gratitude journal is one of the best tools for a blogger. Gratitude quickly shifts your mental and physical “state” to a lighter and higher vibration.

A Mental “Check-in”

I’ve personally found particularly destructive circumstances for your creativity are those shown on the lower level of the emotional guidance scale (shown above). These are emotions of anger, jealousy, unworthiness and powerlessness. Often I might watch a video of someone online, for example, which might trigger feelings of unworthiness. Some leader type such as Tony Robbins might even have a negative effect on me because I compare myself to him! How stupid I know!

If I get into an argument, it can affect my mental state for long after the quarrel, too, affecting my ability to create content. We often carry around a lot of mental baggage and “noise” which affects our ability to come up with spontaneous ideas.

I find a mental “check-in” helps me detach from what’s going on inside and become more present. This in turn helps you return to the flow state where ideas come more freely. So if you’re carrying a lot of mental indecision, noise, unworthiness and so on, it’s likely holding you back from being creative.

To help switch off the mental internal “noise” I use:

Meditation
Exercise
Mindfulness exercises – moving meditation such as kung fu exercises (Siu Lim Tao is a kung fu exercise I practice regularly)

Look At Your Consumption Habits

What information are you consuming on a regular basis? Is it information which inspires you and gives you ideas for your blog posts? Or is it social media conflicts and problems with the state of the world! I often catch myself “doom” scrolling social media finding all the problems with the world. This puts me in a negative and fearful state from which is can be very difficult to return!

So if this happens for you, it might be worth having a “digital detox” and finding some new information to consume. As already mentioned in this post, I find self help, psychology and mindset books, as well as certain business books are inspiring.

What books inspire you and give you ideas for your blog posts? Make a habit out of reading these kinds of books and you’ll find you’re much more inspired for your blog posts than if you constantly doom scroll social media sites instead!

Summary

So there’s a few ideas for how to stay in the “flow” state for blogging. Staying in a positive mindset is paramount if you want to make a good habit out of blogging. If you find yourself “blocked”, don’t force it. Just shift your mental state instead!

There’s lots of ways you can “gear” your brain to stay in a state of flow. Firstly take an inventory of your consumption habits and remove those which put you in a negative state of mind. This could be social media scrolling for example. I’ve definitely found Facebook throws me into a negative state when I see how great everyone’s life “appears” to be on their news feeds! So I avoid the platform if I want to be creative and write!

Take regular check-in’s with your mental “inner” space. Notice what situations and circumstances throw you off and start avoiding them! Look for inspirational books, and follow other bloggers who inspire you. Sign up to inspirational email lists so you get regular ideas dropping into your inbox!

If you find yourself in a negative state these are some simple tools you can use:

Tidy your space
Meditate
Take some exercise
Use music to shift your state
Take a break and remove the pressure to write if needed
Read an inspiring book or blog post

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How To Keep Going With Blogging

Ever wondered how to keep going with blogging? Successful bloggers have thousands of posts on their blogs. But how to they keep going for so long? Why do so many quit? To get a regular readership with blogging takes time. There’s also over 600 million blogs on the internet so there’s plenty of competition. To stand out you need to pick a topic you’re going to stick at for several months or years.

Picking a topic you don’t care about is the worst thing you can do. I tried this several years ago and found myself writing about mushroom harvesting! I didn’t know anything about it, nor did I care. My goal was to create a successful website which made money organically. By starting with this intention, I found myself in some hot water. After 6 months of writing about mushroom harvesting, types of mushrooms and growing mushrooms in general, I got stuck! I was burned out and had had enough of mushrooms! So I quit!

Looking back my intention was all wrong. I put money first and as a result the blog was a failure. That’s because my heart wasn’t in it. My mushroom website ranked at the top of Google for some time. However, it was a difficult topic to monetise and I eventually let it drop! Some other blogger took the top place in Google – someone who was passionate about their topic. As a result, they had created much more content – including videos of their own mushroom harvesting activities!

How To Keep Going With Blogging – Touchy Feely

This might sound rather “touchy feely” to some, but I’ve since learned to choose a topic which is heart aligned. Find a topic you’re passionate about and could blog about forever. That way, you’ll never tire of writing and you’ll outlast any competition.

Many bloggers quit when they lose their desire to blog. But if you choose a topic you’re genuinely inspired by, your blogging habit can become a joy, rather than a burden. When you remove the “end goal” of making money, and choose a topic which gives you intrinsic motivation to blog, you’ll do it regardless of the outcome.

That’s where you need to be. As a mentor of mine said in relation to building an online business:

“The man who enjoys walking goes further than the man who likes the destination”

How To Keep Going With Blogging – How To Find Your Niche

I’ve written some posts on finding your niche for blogging before. For me, it didn’t come straight away. Before I built this website “affiliate marketing mentors” I had already built several hundred websites, most of which failed miserably! One of my first ones was a website tedsheds.net, which has long since passed. I wrote about shed plans for a while and managed to rank the site on Google for a popular keyword. I managed to sell a Clickbank product from it but it was only a short lived success.

Many of my other websites didn’t rank at all for their keywords even though I spend hour upon hour building them and creating content on them. The main takeaway from it all was this:

My focus was only on selling some spammy affiliate product from my sites and to make money – I wasn’t providing any real value.

After getting some more training in affiliate marketing I was given the advice of putting the value first – help people with a problem. I like to use Martin Lewis’s website as an example of an affiliate marketing website which does this superbly: Moneysavingexpert.com

How To Keep Going With Blogging – Give First, Get Later!

With Martin Lewis’s site, MoneySavingExpert.com, he offers advice about saving, mortgages, credit cards and so on. The main goal of the website is to help people with their money/spending.

In my early days as an affiliate marketer, I was focused only on the getting, and for as little work as possible! Big mistake! My websites only got sandboxed by Google and disappeared into the vast abyss of the internet with all the other invisible sites which never amounted to anything.

My “energy” was in desperation, because I was broke – also not a good foundation for building an online business from! But because I was desperate, and didn’t have a clue, I made a lot of mistakes. I didn’t lay the groundwork for my websites which would have saved me a lot of problems.

Use Your Own Journey/Experience

If you use your own journey or experience of something, you can always be genuine. There’s a saying which is apt for building a blog:

Oscar Wilde — ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’

blog traffic — Blog traffic on this website

When I first started blogging, however, this was more difficult than it has become over time. I was convinced that I wasn’t good enough and that I didn’t know anything worth sharing. So I felt that I should “assume some authority which I didn’t have”.

If you’re just starting out with a blog, my advice is to just get going. Be genuine. Initially, you’re not going to get a huge following. So there’s room for growth as you learn the ropes. Don’t expect a massive amount of people to find your blog posts in the beginning. There’s comfort in this, especially if, like me, you’re a little shy or feel as though you have nothing worth sharing.

Using your own experience and finding something you genuinely want to blog about are your superpowers. When you find your niche, it’s fun writing and you could do it forever, regardless of the rewards.

When you only want the reward, your creativity is stunted by thinking of whether something “works” or not. Will this work, will that work. “Is it worth all the trouble or should I not bother?” This thinking will only lead to inaction. Even if you start, with the goal of a sale in mind, you’ll be too anxious looking for the result and this can easily put you into a state of indecision and procrastination. Instead, focus on the post that inspires you, and which you want to write regardless.

Trust And Doubt In Blogging

Not everyone is motivated my money. When I started out looking for a way to earn an income online, the money was all I could think of. I just didn’t know how to make it. The problem with being money focused with an online business is that it doesn’t come immediately. There’s a lot of work to do beforehand, especially if you’re going down the organic marketing route such as with blogging.

It can take months or years to get your blog bringing in a good income. I’ve had some great months and some lousy months through blogging. Sometimes you’re up and other times you’re down! As with any business, it’s inconsistent. The key is to become consistent yourself, in order to build the consistency with your business.

I’ve definitely found consistency to be one of my main problems when it comes to blogging. In the early days, I was unsure whether blogging would be a good use of my time. So I would write a few blog posts and then sit and wait for the “results”. Nothing would happen. So I’d quit! Then, maybe a month later a sale would drop in! “Damn”, I thought, “if only I had kept up the habit, I’d have several sales by now!” As my confidence in blogging grew (as a form of income), I trusted it more and became more consistent with it.

But the main way I found to keep going was to find an intrinsic motivator which helped me stay the course.

My Intrinsic Motivator

My initial intrinsic motivator was simply one of achievement. I wanted to create some content which would rank on Google. Whether I made money or not wouldn’t matter if I achieved a ranking of my website. I knew, of course that a ranking would mean more traffic and more sales of course. But my focus was only on the task of getting a ranking. To get a ranking, I would find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.

Once I found a good keyword match, I would create some awesome content for it, which was far superior to anything currently ranking on Google! My motivation became therefore about creating awesome content which ranked on Google; NOT MAKING THE MONEY! The money became a by-product of my creating awesome content!

I can’t say that I was always super motivated by rankings because some days I simply wasn’t! Even now, I’m a little sceptical of Google and its ranking algorithms! Many of my rankings have dropped off too, but some of them remain! The point isn’t rankings though, it is to find a motivation to do the work first outside of the end result which may be far away. A shorter term motivation has always helped me.

Give Yourself A Reward System

It’s not much work to write a single blog post. As you’re beginning as a blogger, remind yourself not to worry about how your posts are perceived, since it probably won’t get a lot of views! As bad as this sounds, it can help if you’re worried about this! Use a reward system when you’re done, such as a cup of coffee or a biscuit! Don’t allow yourself the “treat” until you’ve done your post for the day!

Using a reward system has got me over the procrastination “hump” many times. Some days you just aren’t inspired to write. Allow yourself the luxury of having a few “duvet” days where you let yourself off the hook. Some days you will just have a mental block, or are uninspired. Use those days instead for strategising about other areas of your online business perhaps, or just getting yourself into a better state of mind.

When you’re struggling, just start writing about how stuck you are! Craft a post which might help someone else in your exact circumstance! I’m sure many of my posts simply haven’t been seen! Some of them I didn’t even promote! Sometimes the blog post is just for you – to get the wheels turning and start the habit. Remind yourself of this when you’re stuck.

See also my post about getting unstuck in your affiliate marketing business.

When You’re Stuck, Work On “You”

A few years ago I was really frustrated with my blogging. I wanted a sale and couldn’t understand how nothing seemed to be happening no matter how hard I worked! Sometimes blogging is just like this! I was about to quit the community I had joined to help me with my affiliate marketing (click here for info), and I reached out for support.

I met up with two members of the community (Gill and Frank) who helped me immensely and I’ll never forget it! The thing was, I had worked myself into a bit of a “Frenzy” (as I’m prone to do occasionally). Instead of assuring me about my direction of blogging or anything like that I was given the advice to start a gratitude journal and read a book!

Well it turned out to be great advice because I was simply burned out. Plus, I had been looking so much for the “result” that I was pushing it away! I had forgotten to look after myself and my health was suffering. It was a wake up call! Just remember, no amount of success is worth losing your health over!

Summary

So here’s the main points I’ve covered in this post “How To Keep Going With Blogging”:

Choose a topic which is “heartfelt” – close to your heart and that you’re passionate about or at least interested in. It’s far easier to keep going when you love your topic!
Don’t put the money first, put your topic/passion first
Give first – get later. Focus on a topic which actually helps your audience, rather than focusing on “what you will get from it”!
Use your own journey/experience and be genuine – when you’re genuine it’s much more inspiring to read and there’s less competition for “you” when you’re being yourself – nobody can imitate you! “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you’ve got it made.”― George Burns
Trust the journey – if you find a journey with “heart” you’ll keep going long beyond those who quit.
Find an intrinsic motivator (which is shorter term than the financial reward) – e.g. hits on your website, rankings, leads/subscribers etc.
Give yourself a reward system – such as a cup of coffee/biscuit etc. For a longer term achievement you can find a larger reward.
Sometimes the blog post is “just for you” – it doesn’t have to be perfect! Remove some of your mental objections (self judgement, perfectionism etc.) and write it just for you, and to get the wheels turning on the blog habit.
If you get stuck write the post which you need to read to help you get unstuck! See how to get unstuck in your affiliate business.
When you’re stuck work on you – take care of your mental and physical health and don’t forget that’s the real key to success – good health!
Enjoy the journey and remember to have fun – don’t make it too serious!

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing

If you’re wondering how to build momentum with organic marketing, or even struggling to get started, this one’s for you! Once you are on a roll with your organic marketing campaign, you will see more traffic, leads and sales. But this can take some time. Before you get into 5th gear you need to drop the clutch, put it in first and slowly move forwards.

That can be daunting if you’re unsure about your topic, what to write, (or create videos about) or if you’re shy on camera or even doubt your own writing ability, for example. All these factors can and will stop you from even getting started. So that’s where to begin. I was super shy on camera shooting my first few videos but over time I got over it. Still, there’s work to be done too!

If you’re shy or lack confidence, keep in mind very few people will see your stuff when you are just starting out – (silver linings to no traffic!) If you lack confidence, that’s going to you hold back in promoting your content too. So on the plus side, you will naturally attract a larger audience when you gain confidence and that might be somewhere down the road.

For starters, lets look at your niche as what topic you decide to delve into is massively important.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Choosing Your Niche

Your niche is the topic you decide you’re going to be creating content about. Creating content in a niche you are passionate about is always going to be much more enjoyable than one in which you have zero interest. Plus, you probably already follow others in your niche who can give you content ideas as time goes on.

It’s likely that your niche is related to the topic/s you’re already following online. Have a look at your YouTube channel and other social media platforms. What kind of leaders are you following? What are you interested in? If you align your niche with your passions and interests, you won’t ever run out of ideas and your own personal growth is tied in with your content production.

Choosing a niche you have no passion for is exhausting. I tried it once and lasted about 6 months before I completely burned out. Pick one you can keep working in for the long term, and in which you are investing in continual personal growth. You don’t have to know everything about your topic either, because you can always learn more. The key is to pick a topic you’re aligned with.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Your “Why?”

Suppose you’re a Tony Robbins fan, for example. He’s big on personal growth and the psychology of success. You could watch a video of his on YouTube and take a single idea from it to create a video or article of your own. Here’s the first video I found of him and here’s an interesting question he asks “What is your motive for action?”

An intrinsic motivation is different to an external motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, while extrinsic motivation arises from external factors. When you are intrinsically motivated, you engage in an activity because you enjoy it and get personal satisfaction from doing it. When you are extrinsically motivated, you do something in order to gain an external reward.

The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.

Don’t forget there’s over 600 million blogs on the internet and more than 114 million active YouTube channels too. So whether you’re creating written or video content there’s huge competition for organic traffic. What’s NOT going make you stand out is if you copy someone else and/or are solely money motivated in your actions. To build momentum with organic marketing you’re going to need to enjoy the journey and have intrinsic motivation.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Your First Piece Of Content

Your first piece of content is the start of this journey but remember that you are building momentum here! I find an inspiring idea will help me to get the wheels turning. Before you can create your first piece of content you need a website, or access to a video platform such as YouTube or TikTok.

If you haven’t done this before consider it a dry run. That takes the pressure out of it and lets you experiment. Consider your first YouTube video a practice in shooting a video and then uploading it. Or if you’re blogging the act of publishing your first piece of content is a major first step. You can even use free blog platforms such as Hubpages.com. Hubpages is where I first published an article and where I made my first affiliate sale too!

If you’re procrastinating here, try and take the pressure out of it for yourself. Checkout my post on overcoming procrastination in your affiliate marketing business. You may need to take a step or two back: clear your desk, outline your concerns or remove the importance around the issue somehow. Mental blockages can stop you moving forwards. This could be genuine concerns about a work colleague or boss seeing your video and it affecting your work somehow, for example. Or your belief that you’re not good enough, or will be criticised for your work. I’ve personally found that the inner critic (yourself) tends to be worse than anyone else who might openly criticise you.

You’ll need to deal with these issues before you can actually move forwards. By bringing them into your conscious awareness you can help to resolve them. A first step might be writing down all your inner conflicts. Then work through them one by one until you have resolved them.

Take the importance out of the initial step of creating a piece of content and give yourself a reward of some kind for having taken it.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Congratulations!

Congratulations you’ve created your first piece of content and published it! Whether that’s a YouTube video or a blog post, well done. Don’t diminish the importance of taking a small step because momentum is created by taking small steps again and again. As the saying goes “a journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step”.

Building momentum with organic marketing is firstly about creating habits out of creating content. So you want to create a habit of doing this by creating content again and again. As you do so you’ll get better and better at it too and more confident and self assured in doing so! So don’t worry if you’re not happy with your content at first. The key is to get into motion and start taking small, positive actions in the right direction.

Now you have created some content you can share it on your social media accounts. That’s a great, free way to get your content out there. It’s useful to also create a habit out of content promotion. Without it, your content won’t get seen by anyone.

To get momentum through organic marketing, you’re going to want to make habits out of:

Creating (useful) content for your audience
Promoting that content

To build the habit, you only need to get started. As you progress, you will find your content will improve as you become more comfortable creating it (and sharing it).

Aligning Content With Your Product/s

It’s worth a mention here that your content should serve your audience in some way and be helpful to them. Otherwise, you’re not going to attract the audience you want with your content. Your content should also serve to attract an audience you can serve with your affiliate products (presuming you’re monetising your content with this strategy).

how to build momentum with organic marketing

So before you rush off and create a tonne of content, be advised that not all traffic is targeted traffic. If you’re building an affiliate business with your content you want that content to attract the right audience. To do so you need to align your niche carefully with your content and your affiliate product. Otherwise you’ll be spending a lot of time and effort in attracting the wrong audience!

See the customer avatar worksheet pdf and spend some time learning about who you want to attract with your content.

Content Promotion & Self Belief

Content promotion is as important as content creation. If you spend all your time creating content, in the hope that “one day” it will be found, you’re not going to create the momentum you really need to build an affiliate business around it. So content promotion should be tended to as a matter of urgency once you publish your content.

I struggled with promotion partly because of shyness, lack of confidence and insecurity as well as my not understanding the importance of promotion. The same reasons which can hold you from getting started in the first place can stop you from attracting the audience you deserve. When you look at the lack of traffic you have, you may consider that organic traffic “simply doesn’t work”. But in fact it is your own cognitive bias working against you (through lack of self belief) and/or lack of action.

Hence this is why you must work on yourself as well as your affiliate business. If you’re full of doubt, your results will mirror that doubt. When you’re full of passion, self belief and inspiration, your results will mirror that too – but only if you take action!

Some promotion methods include:

Social media posting
Email list – don’t forget your email list
Paid advertising
Q & A websites – drive traffic with Quora
SEO – Search engine optimisation
Offline advertising

Rinse & Repeat

Now you have the ball rolling, it’s important to keep it rolling. Don’t burn out though but instead commit to a daily/weekly habit schedule you can sustain over the longer term.

Momentum doesn’t happen with one action but with many actions repeated over time. So in the beginning it’s important to take small regular actions which can be repeated to build habits. Motivation doesn’t last, it only gets you going. Once you have overcome the inertia of not doing, you need to maintain the action steps which will build momentum over time.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss” and it takes much less effort to keep a stone rolling than to start it rolling!

A good daily/weekly habit pattern to begin with is to:

Create a piece of content (every day ideally, but whatever you can manage at first)
Publish and promote it – through your email list, on social media, etc.

Get this habit pattern down to the extent that it feels wrong NOT doing it. This usually takes a month or two of consistent action.

What To Expect

At first you’ll likely not notice much shift in your traffic. However, that’s because you haven’t yet built up momentum. Don’t be too eager to look for results at this early stage because it will likely send you into doubt and scepticism. You know what happens when you’re in the state of doubt? That’s right – nothing! You’ll doubt your course and STOP moving forwards. Then, nothing can happen.

I’ve been here many times, lacking motivation and lacking a habit which drives my business forwards. It’s not a great place to reside if you want growth! Focus instead on the small wins – your daily/weekly habit patterns and the hits you receive on your website as a result. Take these small wins as major achievements because they are – you’re learning to build organic traffic to your website.

If you persist, your traffic will continue to grow, albeit slowly. Keep examining your content generation, intentions and promotion methods as you move forwards, improving in every area. Once you’re a month or two in, you should have found a nice momentum.

I’ve had times where I lost the faith in my blogging habit, so I stopped. Then a sale would drop in and re-inspire me to take action again. I would kick myself for losing the faith and stopping, having lost what would have been even more momentum.

Keep your belief high by fuelling it with your passion on your topic. Follow other leaders in your field and use their content to inspire you for your own!