PB038: The Biggest Lesson I Learned About Building a Profitable Blog in 2015

Note: you can listen to this episode above or load it up in iTunes. How One Humiliating Experience Gave Me a Wake Up Call That Helped Me Build a More Profitable Blog Today, I talk about the humiliating wake up call that changed my life and my blog. In This Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). Today I talk about: My humiliating wake up call 3 simple changes I've made to my life that have improved my blogging The most powerful question you can ask yourself to improve your blog Further Reading and Resources My New Project: Project Me I mentioned this standup desk option that you can sit on your normal desk. Learn more about Intermittent Fasting in this podcast episode on the Vitality Hackers (episode 36)     Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view How are you? Really? Are you already in the habit of asking yourself this question? What changes could you make to your life to support you in improving your blog? I'd love to hear your experience. Let me know in the comments below, and share a link to your blog. Good morning and welcome to episode 38 of the Problogger Podcast. It's Monday morning here in Australia, and I'm getting into my week. Today, I want to talk about something that I think has the potential to transform your blogging and not only that it can transform many areas of your life. I want to tell you a little bit about my own personal journey for the last nine months. Before I do, I want to encourage you to check out today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/38, where I’ll give you some further reading, and also, you have the opportunity to leave a comment and let us know what you think about today's show. If you do enjoy today's show, we'd love you to leave a review on iTunes. Also, there's been some fantastic reviews coming in over the last couple of days. Quite a long one came in from Get Fit Now with Cheryl, who wrote in part—I'll just read the first part—"I've watched my email and podcast list every day for the next episode of ProBlogger. If there's a new episode, no matter what else I'm currently listening to, I switch to ProBlogger." I really appreciate that Cheryl. I got this one from Sharon, which I really enjoyed as well. This is from Sharon Bogan. "Darren Rowse's strength is that he can take massive complex information and break it down into small actionable pieces of advice. None of it is rocket science, but it's all doable and useful.” I love that comment because I think it actually illustrates a point that I try and get across in my teaching all the time. None of what I teach is rocket science. Most of it is quite logical, but the reality is, most people don't apply the simple truth that is behind most successful blogs. Most successful bloggers that I've come across don't do amazingly cutting-edge things. They consistently produce useful content on a day-by-day basis. They interact with their readers. They get off their blogs and interact in other places on the web. Those three things build the foundations for a profitable blog. None of it is rocket science but it is all so important. That leads me to today's topic. Today, I want to pick up a theme that I talked about at the ProBlogger event just over a week ago. My opening keynote, my topic was Three Ways to Make Your Blog Shine. We had a party on Friday night and the theme was shine. Everyone was encouraged to come wearing something a little glittery or shimmery. I myself wore a Michael Jackson glove. That was my touch of shine, but I picked up the theme of shining in my opening keynote because really, that's what the point of the conference but also ProBlogger is about. We want to help bloggers to shine, their blogs to shine,