Last week I hosted my third coffee and Q&A. Yup – we’ve had three meetings so far and I’m loving them. This month we talked about blogging success habits, ISBNs, staying focused, and more.
Blogging Success Habits
Mary joined us for the first time this month and shared her plans for her new blog. What I love about Mary’s business is that she’s already nailed one of the essential habits of successful bloggers.
Mary’s blog is about empowering women to fight the ageing process and live a healthy lifestyle. She’s writing about a topic she’s passionate about. It’s also a subject other people care deeply about.
By picking something she believes in, Mary will find it much easier to keep going through the start-up stages. And having a subject that solves a burning pain will help her quickly find an audience for her blog.
Also, Mary is playing to her strengths. She loves research and writing. So instead of starting a YouTube channel or podcast, she’s focusing on blogging. Where her skills can shine.
Pursuing your passion is about using your gifts. Spending time in your sweet spot. Doing more of what you’re designed to do. And not chasing trends that don’t align with your gifts and your audience.
When you do this, you greatly increase your chances of building a successful blog.
Do You Need ISBNs For Your Book
One of the submitted questions was about ISBNs. Do you need them and where do you get them?
The first thing you need to know about ISBNs is that if you publish exclusively on Amazon and the other print-on-demand platforms (both eBook and paperback) then you probably won’t need to purchase ISBNs. These platforms automatically issue you a free (or discounted) identifier when you publish through them.
However, if you want to get your book into brick and mortar stores and libraries then you do need ISBNs. The process to get them depends on where you live.
If you’d like to know more about ISBNs, then I recommend this blog post on Reedsy which explains how, why and where to get ISBNs for your book(s).
How To Stay Focused
Finally, we talked about staying focused. When you work from home, it can be difficult to stay focused and keep working on your business. There’s no boss to remind you to get your work done.
And I don’t think you can rely on willpower alone. Most humans don’t have a constant supply of willpower. Even when we’re doing work we love. There are too many interesting distractions in life that tempt us away from what we should be doing.
So, my approach to getting the work done is two-fold:
- First figure out your big goal – do you want to earn $100,000 or sell one million books or change a thousand lives? Get crystal clear on what you want to achieve and why it’s important to you.
- Prioritize your work so that you only do the things most likely to move you closer to achieving your goal. Most people do far too many things in their business that have little or no impact on their desired outcome.
And here’s a bonus tip – do the important work first. Whether that’s writing a chapter of your book, reaching out to a potential client, publishing your next blog post. Get the most important tasks done before anything else.
Then, if you feel the call to watch Netflix or research the latest shiny object, you’re free to indulge yourself. It doesn’t matter – because you’ve already done the important work for the day.
You can read more about how I stay focused and plan my working days in this post.
