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You can do a lot of things in 31 days. This is amplified if you focus those 31 days on improving one area of your life. By focusing in on one thing you want to change or do, and making it a priority for 31 days, you will make lasting life changes.

During the next 31 days you could:

• learn a new skill
• lose weight
• create a new habit (getting up early, exercising, etc..)
• start a new business
• put in massive action on your current business
• read several life-changing books (see my top ten book list)
• start, improve and grow your blog
• reinvigorate your marriage
• dramatically increase your website’s exposure
• start a debt free plan
• simplify your household possessions
• conquer a fear

Naturally the list keeps going. You can do so much in 31 days.

Guess what?

August is about to start, and it has 31 days!

What are you going to do in August?

The Success Professor’s 31 Day Challenge

During the month of August, this blog will be hosting a challenge. The challenge is for readers to pick something to focus on during the next 31 days to change your life.

The concept is pretty simple:

• You pick something in your life that you want to do or change in the next 31 days.
• You share in the comments of this article what you will change as part of the challenge
• You get started and do what you set out to do
• You report back how you are progressing

Throughout the month, this blog will feature several update posts. These will be opportunities for you to post your update and record your progress and challenges. The purpose is to provide you with the motivation and the accountability to make a change, to do something important and to make the next 31 days extremely valuable. Further, during each of these updates, I will profile one participant by sharing about their goal and experiences.

What I Will be Doing For the 31 Day Challenge

Naturally, I will participate in the challenge myself. My focus for this challenge will be to make improvements to and grow this blog. I will be following the guide book created by ProBlogger, Darren Rowse, called “31 Days to Build a Better Blog.” My hope is that you will notice the difference. I hope that you will see me in more places on the internet, and that many others will join us in this community. I will use the challenge updates to report on my progress as well.

If you are a blogger, you may want to join me in using the 31 days in the Success Professor’s 31 Day challenge to improve your blog. Pick up the ProBlogger workbook and comment below. There will be an optional email list set up for the people who are working towards a better blog this month. This will provide an extra support platform for this goal.

So what’s next?

Pick the one thing you will change, improve, or do in the next 31 days.
Share what you will work on in the comments below.
Get started!

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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It has been just over two months since I started serious blogging.  Yes, I have posts archived back to 2005, but it was not until the end of August that I started serious blogging.  By serious blogging I mean:

• writing most of my own posts, rather than simple linking to articles on the web
• aiming to provide value for my readers
• working to bring readers to my blog (before August I averaged less than five visits a day).

For the last two months I have been diligent about writing my own original content that aims to provide value for my readers.  I have also have consistently worked on marketing the blog to attract new readers.  Hopefully some of what I have learned will also help you.

Photo by Star-dust

1. Writing Takes the Most Time

One of the biggest surprises for me was in how much time the writing process takes.  I’ve always considered myself a pretty fast writer, and compared to a lot of people that is true.  At work, I seem to be able to write quicker than many of my colleagues, when I was a student I could write faster than other students, and generally my writing speed is pretty high.  Even with that, it still takes longer to write than I had expected.  An average post takes about two hours to write, prepare and post.  Generally the first draft takes an hour, and the review, formatting and posting takes another hour.  The good news is that if I am consistent at putting in an hour a day, I can write and post about three articles a week.  I have been generally fairly consistent at using my Power Hour for this purpose.

2. Marketing Can Be Done One Step at a Time

Because writing good material is my priority, it means that marketing must happen a little more slowly than I had expected.  I have learned enough about promoting a blog that I could easily spend several 40 hour work weeks simply promoting the blog.  However, I have a busy life including my job as a professor, and my rapidly growing home business.  As such, I aim to take one step at a time in expanding my marketing efforts.  I set marketing goals for my blog each week as part of my weekly planning process, and work towards those goals each week.

3. Network, Network, Network

Probably the priority in my promotion efforts has been to establish a presence online by networking with other bloggers and blog readers.  Just like most traditional bricks-and-mortar small business, networking is the lifeblood of my blog. Blogs are not in competition with each other, rather the growth of one blog can support the growth of other blogs (Zen Habits author Leo Babauta has a great post about how success isn’t a competition).   There are several ways that I network with other bloggers and readers:

• leave good comments, including links to my articles when appropriate
• help increase awareness about other good blogs and articles (through sharing links on my blog, submitting their work to Digg! or StumbleUpon.)
• be in email contact directly with other bloggers

4. Contribute with Guest Articles

Another great way of promoting this blog has been through writing guest articles for other blogs.  Certainly this is a little more time consuming than some of the other marketing ideas, but it has been a very valuable way at connecting with new readers.  I have only gotten started at making a serious effort to write for other blogs, but what I have done has made a big difference.  Many of you may have first found your way here through guest posts including my recent guest article at Dumb Little Man. My current goal is to submit one article each week to another blog for a guest post.

5. StumbleUpon!

Again, I’m fairly new to using StumbleUpon but it has been a significant source of traffic.  If you are unfamiliar with StumbleUpon, it is a unique internet community that allows users to recommend websites to other users with similar interests.  My two biggest days for visitor numbers have been when a post received a number of “stumbles”.
Here is a great post about how to use StumbleUpon to increase your traffic.

6. Switching to WordPress and Getting A Domain Name

The first thing I did when I was getting prepared to start blogging more seriously was to switch from Blogger to WordPress and get my own domain name.  This entire process was easier than I expected.  The actual switch process took less than an hour, and learning to use WordPress was very simple.  I find WordPress easier to use and more functional than Blogger.   There are many free WordPress themes to choose from and many Plugins to make it work best for you. If you are looking to make the switch you can read this post about the process.

Hopefully these six steps will be helpful for you and your blogging or internet marketing efforts. Between now and the New Year my blog goals are:

• Double the number of subscribers and daily visitors
• Continue to publish guest posts around the internet
• Make a few small improvements to blog theme
• Add a few more static pages such as a FAQ section

How Can You Help?

• Share this blog!  Email your friends or add a link on your site
• Stumble the blog or your favorite article with StumbleUpon
• Comment on your favorite article
• Share feedback by emailing danny (AT) secondincometeam.com

Thanks for all of your support.  Have a great day!

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache