It’s already a month ago since I organized the cross-blog series on Mastering Productivity. And since this was a new concept (as far as I can tell), I’m going into detail when looking back at the results.

The concept
A cross-blog series is a combination of two concepts:

• Guest posts
  These are articles written by someone else than the blog owner. The benefit for the blog owner is that he gets an article to publish for free (with no or low effort). The benefit for the author is exposure and traffic from to his own site or blog.
• Series of posts
  These are articles that are sequels to each other and posted on different dates. The benefit for the author is that people who like the series will come back to read the sequels.

The concept of the cross-blog series combines these two concepts. Basically a cross-blog series is a series of posts, but published on the same day and time, but each article on a different blog. The benefits are (based on a four-article series):

• A lot of exposure for the author
  This is like having three guest posts on the same day.
• Organic flow of traffic between blogs
  Regular guest posts drive traffic to your site from people that take initiative to visit the author’s blog, because they are curious to see more. CBS has organic traffic from people that want to read the rest of the series as an added benefit
• Inbound traffic for all participants
  The traffic flows between all blogs, not just to and from the author’s blog. Readers will visit each article and by doing so they will visit every blog.

So this is a win-win-win solution. A win for the author, for the blogger’s hosting the series and for the readers as they don’t have to wait for the rest. Click to continue »

How to be an Original is 6 months old. I think it’s amazing that six months have passed already since I decided to start blogging, and acted upon that decision within days. I’m still proud about that decision, because it was a conscious decision to not procrastinate. And I was a master in procrastinating, especially on the area of following my own path. But six months ago I decided to just do it!

I did do a little preparation. I decided that I wanted my own domain, I looked at Guy Kawasaki’s blog to see what kind of blogging platform he was using (Typepad). Signed up and started blogging. I’m loving blogging ever since (but I’ve changed to Wordpress as a platform).

I started blogging to accelerate my path towards a productive and authentic life. And I started blogging as a way to do some personal branding. But in the mean time it has brought me much much more:

• Explaining provokes deeper understanding. When you learn about a topic, you will deepen your understanding by applying it. But explaining it to others needs even another level of understanding. On my blog I explain different concepts and ideas, and by doing so I’m deepening my own knowledge of the specific topic. I blog a lot about finding your values, and pursuing your goals. And by doing so I’m learning a lot about the subject in the mean time (and I apply it in between…).
• Personal branding. I want to start as an entrepreneur in training and coaching, but I have no formal education or professional background in that field. And as a trainer or coach you need personal branding to sell your services. People need to want YOU to deliver the service of training or coaching.So how do you brand yourself in an area where you’re not currently working in and have no formal education in? Well blogging of course! A blog has several advantages ranging from a big resource for potential customers to dive into and to get to “know me” through my writing and my ideas. And building a readership and an active community is also a way of building authority in the field I want to be working in.
• Writing forces structure in reasoning. Writing is essentially a monologue. I’m speaking (silently) and you’re listening by reading. Only after I’ve written something, and after you’ve read it, the interaction begins. I speak, you listen, then we discuss. This is totally different from ‘real life’ situations where you explain something. In that case the interaction starts the moment you start explaining. You continuously look for verbal and non-verbal signals to check whether your audience is still connected and you act upon that information by repeating stuff or by picking up pace for instance.Writing does not give you that advantage. It requires more thought to get a message across and keep readers connected. This process is great for structuring my reasoning about a topic. And it gives me a lot of written material that might be very useful in the future.
• Comments help me develop further. When you reflect upon my ideas and ask questions, or add context and information to what I write about, you give me the opportunity to develop further. I love that aspect of blogging! Interacting about ideas in the comments gives a lot of insight, both for the readers and for me. This is really a win-win situation.
• Passive income. After a month or two of blogging, I discovered Problogger and Genius Types. Both blogs are great resources that help you build your blog and discuss options of monetizing it. The fact that you could make money from blogging was appealing. This aspect is a nice addition to this activity that already brings me a lot. And it helps me a step forward to financial freedom, not bad
• Getting to know interesting people. Last but, definitely not least! There are a lot of interesting people that I’ve met through blogging. I enjoy interacting with you and I learn so much from you, about blogging, about my quest, about the importance of co-creation, about the power of collaboration. I love how the blogosphere is growing at astounding rates and essentially is a non-competitive environment.

I’ve been blogging for some months now and I have started to monetize my blog. At first I was hoping to get break-even, but my ambitions are higher.

This article is about why I monetize my blog and what I try to achieve by it. I’ll also dive into how I’ll be monetizing my blog and what guidelines I’m setting myself for it.

Doing something I love to do

One of the best things in life is to do what you love to do. In my article about my mission statement, you can read who I am and what experiences I want in my life.

This blog is one of the things I love to do as I love the subject of personal development. Writing about it and interacting with you guys gives me a lot of energy, fun and insight at the same time.

If you add enough value…

I strongly believe that if you add value to the lives of others, value will be returned. My intention is to add value to your lives, and blogging is only one of the ways I intend to do this. But value returned does not come automatically. Most of the times you have to make sure that you can be reached. If you’re not ready to receive, nobody can give. So monetizing my blog is a way of empowering the world to return value to me. It is a way of saying I’m ready to receive. Click to continue »

This is the first Sketchcast Saturday. Today I explain how I’m going to use sketchcasting as a tool on my blog. This is not an introduction on sketchcasting in general, you can find that on Rich Ziade’s site.

I enjoyed making it, but I sure hope that the next ones will take less time to make. It’s really hard to speak and not go Uhm and Aah all the time…

I hope you’ll enjoy this, and I appreciate all the feedback you guys can come up with!

How to be an Original is 4 months old now. Three months seems to be the critical time frame to find out whether you’re a blogger or not. A lot of people stop at that point in time, and those that don’t seem to have a blogger’s dip with a dry spell in inspiration for posts. I have had that dry spell, but I’m not done blogging Not by a long shot, I like it way too much and I’ve learned so much while blogging, that I plan to continue for a long time.

During that dry spell, I had the feeling that I needed a routine in my blogging, that I was lacking structure. So I’ve been working on a weekly routine for How to be an Original for a couple of weeks now, well not really working on it, but it changed a little bit everytime. This is stuff that needs to mature over time. Here’s the routine:

Productive Monday
On Mondays at the start of the new week, I’ll be focusing on (personal) productivity. I use GTD as a system, but I adapt it to my own needs. I’ll be writing about the concepts, my experiences, tools I use and so on. Click to continue »