Become a Blogger " part 2 / 7 "

Welcome to Part Two of the Become A Blogger Mini
Course. In Part 1, you learned what exactly a blog
is and how you can use it to your own advantage.

By now you may be thinking it's a good idea to
create a blog of your own. But the big question
is, what exactly should you be blogging about?

This is one of the most common questions I get
from the thousands and thousands of people who are
currently subscribed to our newsletter, and with
today's lesson, I'd like to give you a few
pointers on how to select the perfect topic for
your blog.

Inside this lesson, you'll learn:

- What "the blogging flow state" is and how it can
help you come up with exactly the right topic for
your blog...

- How to come up with multiple different options
to choose from for your blog topic...

- How to decide on the most appropriate topic that
will provide you with the highest chance of
success...

- What the next step is after you've decided on
your topic...

I'd like to remind you that this mini series is a
companion guide to The Roadmap To Become A Blogger
Report, so make sure you have the report next to
you as you go through today's lesson.

In particular, you'll need to have a look at
milestones number 1 to 3 inside the The Roadmap
Report.

Ok, let's get into the first point...

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1. What "the blogging flow state" is and how it
can help you come up with exactly the right topic
for your blog...
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If you've ever watched professional tennis
players, I'm sure you will have noticed their
amazing ability to concentrate and focus on the
present moment. Or as some would call it, the
"now".

When interviewed, many sports people mention that
they often get into what they call "The Zone".
During these times their performances just seem to
flow smoothly and everything goes right for them.

It was the famous psychiatrist Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, who first coined the term "flow"
in this context and did an amazing amount of
research to figure out exactly how to get into
this ever elusive state known as "flow".

His argument was that the more often you can get
into a flow state, the more you will enjoy life
and achieve lasting happiness as a result.

The same idea can be applied to blogging, and
finding a suitable topic to blog about.

The bottom line with being in a flow state, is
that it's all about the PROCESS of doing
something, as opposed to the RESULT of doing
something.

In other words, it's important to be enjoying
activities for the sake of doing them, as opposed
to slaving away at an unpleasant activity just
because it has a desirable outcome.

Do you get what I'm saying here?

Because it's really important that you understand
this.

Let's dig a little deeper just to make sure you
understand the significance of this point...

From Yaro and my own experience, to become a
successful blogger, it's absolutely essential that
you:

(a) blog about a topic you love DOING...

and also...

(b) enjoy the PROCESS of blogging and creating
content related to your topic of choice.

If you can "check the boxes" for both the above
points, you will have come a long way towards your
success as a blogger.

But I can't stress these two points enough. If
either of the above two criteria are not met,
you'll find it difficult to succeed or even start
as a blogger.

So, before you even think about coming up with
different topics for your blog, let's have a
closer look at each one of the above two points...

A. Blogging about a topic you love DOING

Ok, let's look at an example to clarify the
point...

Let's say you just LOVE everything about knitting.
Whenever you are knitting, or reading about
knitting, or learning new skills about knitting,
time seems to just disappear and you get so
engrossed in your activity that you don't even
notice what's happening around you.

That is, whenever you get involved in the topic of
knitting, you mysteriously enter into a state of
flow, or you get into "the zone" of knitting... as
many sports people call it.

This is a typical example where you would enjoy
the PROCESS of knitting and may not even care too
much about the RESULT... a bunch of woolen
jerseys.

Of course, you may enjoy the result of your
knitting a lot too, but let's face it, if you
really hate the process of knitting, you'll give
up pretty quickly, even though you know that you
could be having a nice woolen jersey at the end of
it.

Do you see the difference though, between enjoying
the PROCESS and enjoying the RESULT?

Another good example is where a young person takes
on a demanding accounting degree because they like
the prospect of earning a high salary. Sooner or
later, if they do not enjoy the process of
accounting, they'll discover that their job
becomes unbearable and soul draining, even though
they may be getting a nice fat pay check week
after week.

In this particular case, even though the result is
desirable, the actual process of getting there may
not be. (Of course, it's very possible that
someone may enjoy the process of accounting, and
these will be the top performers in their
profession.)

So, where does this leave you for blogging?

It's key here that you select a topic that you
love DOING. A topic where you enjoy the PROCESS of
getting engaged in it as opposed to the RESULT. Of
course, the ideal is to get enjoyment out of both
the process AND the result. When you can achieve
THAT, you'll be on a winning streak.

In the next section, I'll talk about a great
technique for coming up with potential topics to
blog about.

But first, let's assume now that you've found that
wonderful topic that you love so much. You're
still not fully there yet. You need to solve the
other part of the puzzle as well, which is...

B. Enjoying the actual PROCESS of blogging and
creating content related to your topic of choice

In his book "Flow", Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
mentions that it's possible to actually "engineer"
a flow state for whatever activity you engage in.
From his research, he found four guidelines you
need to keep in mind to help you get into the flow
state of any activity.

Here they are:

1. The skill of the activity must match the
challenge of the activity. If the the challenge is
too great, your skills won't be up to the level
required, and then you could end up feeling all
anxious.

And vice versa, if the challenge is too low,
you'll get bored. Of course, this also implies
that the higher your level of skill in an
activity, the greater challenges you can afford to
take on.

2. The activity must be goal directed. In other
words, by doing the activity, it must help you
move closer to a specific, pre-defined goal.

3. The activity must be rule bound. This simply
means that there must be some rules or guidelines
that defines "fair play" for your activity.

4. The activity must have some kind of a feedback
loop to help you figure out whether you're on the
right track.

So, let's apply these 4 guidelines to blogging...

First of all, the discipline of blogging requires
that you learn the skill of blogging. At first you
may feel overwhelmed and maybe even anxious about
it, but as you practice more and more, your skill
level will increase to meet the challenge,
increasing your chance of getting into the flow of
blogging.

In terms of a goal for blogging, a typical goal is
to create a blog post. That's a fairly clear and
concrete goal, and it's even possible to visualize
a blog post to some extent.

In terms of rules, well, you need to stick to the
rules of the language that you're using - like
spelling and grammar. The better you know the
"rules" of English, the better your chance of
writing great content.

And finally, in terms of feedback, there are two
levels. There is an immediate feedback loop as you
type (you can see the text appearing on your
screen), and you will also get feedback from other
people as they read your post and provide you with
comments.

The "take home" point here is that you need to
develop the skill of blogging before you can
really get into the flow of it. The same applies
for getting involved in your topic of choice.

All this may seem a bit unrelated to finding your
topic, but it's all very much interconnected. If
you can find a topic area that you can naturally
and easily get into the flow state of, and then
blog about it while you're in flow state, you've
got a golden combination.

Using Yaro Starak as an example - he absolutely
LOVES everything to do with Internet Marketing.
So, the first box is checked. He then blogs about
this very same topic, and while doing so gets into
"the blogging flow state". He's been blogging for
so long now and he's honed in on his content
creation skills so much now, so that whenever he
does it, he almost always gets into a flow state.

Believe it or not, I am in a flow state right now
as I'm writing this email letter. And an
interesting side effect of being in a flow state,
is that you're results are normally WAY better
than when you are not in a flow state.

In other words, by getting into the flow state for
both your topic area as well as the blogging
process, you are almost guaranteed success!

But enough about flow. Let's move onto the next
major point...

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2. How to come up with multiple different options
to choose from for your blog topic...
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Now that you know the importance of flow and the
theory behind it, I bet you're still kind of lost
when it comes to narrowing down to the topic that
you should be blogging about.

Inside this section, I'll reveal some easy and
practical tips to help you come up with a bunch of
different options to choose from.

What's great about this method, is that the topic
options you'll end up with will be "optimized" to
increase your chances of naturally getting into
the flow state when you blog about them.

Here's what I suggest you do to help you come up
with truckloads of possible options...

Brainstorm a massive list, or mindmap where you
list all of the following things:

- Every topic that you know a lot of things about.
This could include your hobbies, your job, your
interests, your skills and your natural talents.

- Everything that you absolutely LOVE learning
about. List everything that you are naturally
attracted to.

- Everything that you are naturally good at. This
is where you can go nuts with all your natural
talents - the stuff that you find naturally easy
to do.

- Everything that you naturally enjoy doing.

Some of the topics you list using the above
guidelines may overlap a little, but don't let
that worry you.

The point is that you come up with as many options
as possible, so that you can get a nice overview
of all the different topics that you could
possibly blog about. And then, when you're done
with that, you can narrow down to your favorites.

I strongly suggest you use a mind map for this
exercise. Using a mind map will not only help your
ideas flow better, but it will also help you come
up with new topics WITHIN existing topics. And
just having everything in a mind map format will
also help you visualize all your different topics
so much better.

And this leads us to the next point...

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3. How to decide on the most appropriate topic
that will provide you with the highest chance of
success...
##################################################

You're almost there...

Coming up with topics can be relatively easy.
Especially if you follow the guidelines I provided
you with earlier.

But how do you know that your topic will be
popular enough to provide you with a sustainable
stream of traffic day in and day out?

The short answer is that you can never know for
sure how well a topic will do in the marketplace.
There are just so many variables, and with
technology changing so rapidly nowadays, new
"topics" are created almost every day - none of
which we could have dreamed about 10 or even 5
years ago!

But, there are some guidelines you could follow to
help you narrow down on the topics that you listed
in the previous step.

To help you with this, I suggest you read the
section under Milestone #2 (Discover The Need)
inside The Roadmap Report.

After reading Milestone #2 again, look at your
list of possible topics, try to prioritize them in
some way, and then identify your top 3 topics that
you could see yourself blogging about, and that
you feel there is a market for.

You are then ready for the final point...

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4. What the next step is after you've decided on
your topic...
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This is where "the rubber meets the road". You are
now ready to create your blog.

But, instead of creating a new blog for each of
the 3 most popular topics all at the same time,
just pick the one you like the most, and create a
blog for that ONE topic alone.

Then focus your efforts completely on this ONE
blog and do everything you can to make it a
success. Run it for at least 3 to 6 months before
deciding whether you want to continue with it for
the long term.

To set up your blog, just head on over to
www.becomeablogger.com and watch and implement the
lessons from the 10 complimentary videos there.
They show you step by step how to set up your blog
from scratch.

In a nutshell, here are the steps for setting up
your blog:

Step 1. Create a new domain name using the following
service:

http://www.namecheap.com/

Step 2. Set up a new host using the following
service:

http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=babdotcom

Step 3. Install the WordPress software from
www.WordPress.org (make sure you install version
2.6.3. - I show you how to do this inside the
videos.)

Step 4. Install all the right plugins to optimize
your blog for Search Engine Optimization (I
mention a few of the most important ones inside
the videos but I'll also cover this inside the
next lesson).

And that's basically it!

So, once you've got your topic, go ahead and set
up your blog, and then start creating content like
crazy. Before you know it, you will have built up
a sufficient skill level and then blogging will
feel like second nature to you. You'll then find
it easy as pie to get into "The Blogging Zone"!

Inside the next part of this mini course, I'll
show you how to optimize your blog for both search
engines, as well as your visitors - this will help
you get more traffic later on...

Until then...

Gideon and Yaro
Become A Blogger