Do you know that you need to develop certain habits in order to become a successful home based business blogger?
This might sound weird to some of you.
Should I change my own habits in order to succeed with a business?
Yes of course, as long as the business depends on you and you are the one in-charge of it.
And, as long as the business is your dream!
Do we agree on this? Let’s proceed then!
Home based business blogging, in particular, needs involvement from the person who is running the business.
It is not like the big businesses involving firms/companies where hundreds of people work.
Home based businesses are usually started on a small scale, on a smaller budget and yes with a small number of staff – in most cases it is the blogger alone who owns and who is the “company”.
Hence it is highly crucial that as a blogger you need to develop certain qualities/habits in order to taste success in this challenging venture.
Let’s dive right in!
#1 Successful home based business bloggers have clarity
This is the one of the most important things you need in order to become a successful blogger.
I don’t know if there’s a grammatical error on that statement or if there is no logic at all (more important than the most important – wow) – but what I’ve said above it totally true!
As I’ve pointed out in the earlier post in this series, having clarity with whatever you do with your business is very very important – both in the short run and the long.
This will matter a lot; if you work in your business with good clarity you can see dramatic good changes with your progress.
If you don’t have clarity, let’s see what are the areas that will be affected in your business –
Your blog/website that represents your business won’t have clarity
I come across a lot of these kind of blogs these days. There are blogs that are just started with no proper goal in mind.
These blogs have mediocre content and it is not surprising because the blogger doesn’t know what they are trying to accomplish with their blog.
They publish rehashed content just because they want to have a blog and keep them updated.
Let’s stop for a moment and ask ourselves this question: Why do you start a home based business blog?
I’d appreciate if you could answer this question in the comments below.
Some of the possible answers are this:
- You want to capture leads (sign ups) to your business.
- There are products that you want to promote.
- You want to promote a service that you offer.
- Your blog is part of your company and you want to keep your customers informed about the updates/notifications/announcements etc.
- You want to showcase your talents to attract clients – your talents in this case could be writing, web design, SEO knowledge etc.
The reasons could be anything like this (this list is not exhaustive; there could be other reasons too!).
I meet a lot of newbie bloggers who approach me for a blog audit and I can see clearly that they cannot answer the above mentioned question.
Or their answer is really vague and/or pointless.
And they wonder why they are not able to succeed with blogging.
And if I tell them that they need clarity in the first place, they give me a weird look.
They tell me they will figure it out in the long run, but now they want me to suggest “push button” solutions so that they can start earning big bucks from tomorrow!
Your visitors will be left confused (and will bounce)
When YOU don’t have clarity with your blogging purpose, this will clearly reflect in your blog’s content, layout, design etc.
So it will not be surprising that your visitors won’t be able to figure out what your blog is about or how THEY can benefit from your blog.
You should not make your visitors spend 5 minutes to figure out what your blog is about or what kind of content you publish.
Nobody has 5 minutes to try to figure out what your site is about.
Rather they’ll just click the back button and seek the same information somewhere else. There are thousands of other blogs and websites that provide the same kind of content that you provide with much more clarity.
Usually you should sit down and write your blog’s Unique Value Proposition (UVP) – this will provide clarity for yourself and also to your blog readers/visitors.
For instance, my blog’s UVP is – “Business advice purely from my personal experience and perspective”.
And I’ve made this UVP the tagline of my blog.
So if you are landing on my blog for the first time, it will not be hard for you to figure out what my blog is about or how you can benefit from my blog!
#2 Successful bloggers learn from their mistakes
We all commit mistakes. Mistakes are part of our lives.
In fact, if we do not make mistakes life will be a lot boring and we will not be able to discover new ways and innovations.
So there’s nothing to be ashamed of or there’s nothing to be upset about when we make a mistake.
But what most bloggers do is one of the following:
- They dwell in their mistakes
- They fear to take action the next time
Both of these are deadly! Dwelling on your mistakes will only make you depressed and discouraged.
Thinking over and over about how terribly you failed on something will do you no good.
On the other hand, if you analyse the failure and try to learn from your mistakes, you will get some golden lessons out of your failed project.
And remember, taking action and failing with something is much better and far superior than not taking action at all.
There are thousands of people who simply think over and over, and fear and hesitate to start something.
But you have started something already, but failed.
Isn’t that a great thing that you actually started (while most people have not even started yet)?
So please never ever hold back from starting something new, or taking action on a new project after a failed one.
Successful bloggers never stop at failure! They always learn from their mistakes and improvise.
They never let a failure to be an obstacle and also they never miss the golden opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
#3 Successful bloggers have self-discipline
Self-discipline is the bridge between your goals and your accomplishment (or success).
On the one end you have your goals and that’s where you start.
Now, no matter how promising and how great your goals are, if you don’t end up accomplishing those goals they are of no use to you and to your business!
But what’s there in between starting with your goals, and ending with accomplishing them is your self-discipline.
There thousands of ways and means to get distracted and get side tracked from a goal.
But all it takes is your self-discipline which will help you accomplish your goal.
You need to put in hard and smart work.
It is important that you need to keep yourself free from distraction.
Or, you should have the discipline to resist the temptation to open Facebook while you are working on your blog post or newsletter!
You may use very many different kinds of time management and organizational tools; but if you lack self-discipline, you won’t benefit much from those tools.
Show your will power and self-discipline in all the small and big things; be it waking up at 5 am, or working until late when the rest of the family is asleep.
It could be a deadline to finish a blog post, or “the time” to sit down and write that chapter in your e-book.
I can surely say that if you’ve got self-discipline, you won’t run out of time or be hectic with finishing your project.
You will be more organized, and you can manage your tasks more effectively in the time available to you, if you are disciplined.
Yes, and this is one of the most important habits of successful bloggers.
And don’t just assume that you are being productive if you are sitting in front of your computer.
You might not be as productive as you think!
#4 Successful bloggers are unbeatable fighters
This trait closely relates to “learning from mistakes” – but things are not THAT easy always. You’d have to show some toughness sometimes with blogging.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I don’t want you to be tough to people; but prove yourself tough and strong to discouraging and demotivating occurrences.
It could be by people or due to circumstances or may it due to your inability to do something – but you should never give up!
I’ve come across various situations where I want something to get; that “something” is usually one of the most crucial things that contribute to my success – but I didn’t know “how”.
It could be the technology, or the strategy or anything of that kind; but I either didn’t have the knowledge about that particular strategy or I didn’t possess enough skills to get it done.
I’m sure you’ve come across a similar situation too!
These are essentially obstacles that come in your journey towards success. Only you should find ways to overcome these obstacles.
I must warn you here that over time, you can easily get demotivated or side tracked when such challenges come to you.
#5 Successful bloggers don’t hold back and they help
This one is a hit in my book. Whenever bloggers think about success, they think about money.
And when they think about money they think about making sales – selling anything possible!
In my opinion, becoming a successful blogger is not about making that quick (one-time) sale.
It is about building rapport with your potential customers.
And how can you build that rapport? You can do so simply by helping them.
I’ve seen this trait as a common thing in most successful bloggers.
They simply help their target customers without holding back; they’re generous. I’ve learned this lesson very recently.
During my early days, I used to think like a salesman. But not anymore!
Now, I truly understand the importance of helping people.
Not only that it helps me build rapport with my potential customers but it also gives me great inner joy.
Every time I help a blogger out with something, I feel great.
Now I hear you. You and I are not doing a home based business just to experience inner joy. We need money right?
Of course, we do. And building rapport is one of the easiest ways to guarantee you consistent income.
When you are a sales man you might succeed in generating one or two quick sales.
But if you help people out, you build a very strong fan base that will guarantee you consistent income for the years to come.
Whenever you launch a product or a service, your fans will be the first people to support you coz they know your “stuff”.
They know how generous you are, how down to earth you are and how quality your content/product/service is.
By the way, in order for this generosity to work, you need to be having “stuff” – I mean top notch quality at your hands!
Being generous and helping people will work in the long run. It will also help build your business from bottom up (with a strong foundation).
With this model, you can run a successful home based business since I can guarantee that you will develop stream(s) of consistent income.
The crucial habits for home based business blogging success
So to recap, following are the five highly crucial habits of successful home based business bloggers:
- Having clarity
- Learning from mistakes
- Having self-discipline
- Be an unbeatable fighter
- Be generous and helping
Do you possess these qualities? If not, don’t take them lightly but get serious and develop these crucial habits.
These are the big picture aspects of successful home based business blogging that are highly crucial aspects and those need your attention.
Even though they seem like stuff that don’t get you immediate results or actionable.
But trust me, if you develop these habits you will see a dramatic improvement in your home based business!
Jeremy Norton says
Having a successful business do take a lot of effort, time and outstanding strategy. If my habits do not do good to my business, then why not change for the better and learn from my mistake.
Jane Sheeba says
Yup! that’s right Jeremy 🙂
Charmie says
Hello Jane,
Really your writing skills and way of approach towards your reader is really catchy, clear and awesome all the way. 🙂 Currently I am into the same phase where I need to get a proper market for my new venture and your article striked at the correct point of time.
Really feeling great after reading such a concrete piece of work.
Thanks a lot for sharing it.
Regards
Charmie
Jane Sheeba says
I’ glad, Charmie. Thanks for stopping by!
Nirmala says
I again read an useful post for home based bloggers Jane 🙂
You points are valid and it is neatly explained here.
I agree that the bloggers should have clarity to attain the goals effortlessly.
I guess, if you have the quality of clarity, then it is possible to have other qualities which you’ve listed above easily.
Even though the value of my clarity is low, I never give up and love to help others.
Thanks again for presenting the nice post Jane 🙂
Jane Sheeba says
Don’t worry about the shorcomings in your value of clarity NIrmala. There’s always room for improvement. I hope this series will help you 🙂
Fabrizio says
Jane, what an awesome insightful post and love the content variety you added with your slide share presentations. I kind of agree with you on the importance of having clarity though sadly many bloggers start out with out a clear strategical plan of what they want or hope to achieve with a blogging business, like you say ‘just for the sake of having a blog so you can be part of the crowd’ isn’t really good enough. We’ve all been there at some point in our journey, it’s just trying to get the message across to as many new bloggers as possible I guess.
I love your UVP it’s pretty unique and gets the message across, which made me think more about mine and whether people come across my blog and know what it’s going to be about. I think that is really important for the user and blogger too.
To answer your question as to why I started a home based blogging business, that’s very interesting. I guess initially because I wanted to create a new online income stream in addition to my other online businesses, however that changed over the years to being more for the reason that I love to provide something valuable and resourceful to others, regardless whether I made money or not, the money has become a positive side effect almost. My main objectives with my blog now is to grow an audience, promote useful and valuable products including my own products.
Thanks Jane.
Jane Sheeba says
Hey Fabrizio thanks for adding your thoughts. Yup we all have been part of the “having a blog just for the sake of it” crowd. But those were old days. And it was OK to be so for a while until we realize that we gotta get serious and then sit down to get clarity.
These times are very different – the blogosphere is so crowded and quite busy. The sooner we get clarity the sooner we can expect results. Changing course meanwhile is totally fine. But starting a blogging journey without clarity is terrible.
Thanks for your comment 🙂
Bilal Malik says
Hey Jane ..
I would like to give your question’s answer. Truly and sincerely I’ve started my blog for getting some money and want to publish my little knowledge to others. I’m a single owner of this but I haven’t published any rehash content. I’m just doing work according to my limitations and blog’s goal and I’m very pleased after reading your words. But Now I don’t know my answer is pointless or not 🙂
I do agree with your point about helping others. Helping Other is always a great feeling. ” The more we help each other, the more people love us ” and this always gives us mentally rests. I love to help others with my short knowledge!
Thanks.
Jane Sheeba says
Hey Bilal its so great that you have enough clarity with your blogging goal. Not everyone has this. However, still “I want to make money online” is a vague goal. You have to get even more precise.
Carve out a precise income goal. And also consult with yourself on the ways you will attempt to make money. Remember, a blog alone won’t make any money. You have to have a business or a product or a service behind it.
So what will be your streams of income as you can see it from now?
Jennifer Hardy says
I agree that a blog needs to have clarity in its content for it to have a clear direction and present a better understanding for its readers. This article nicely presents those details, and the presentation definitely helps in driving home the points.
Naveen Mayura says
hai, Jane Mam.
You Tips is really really rocking! yes of course having clarity can helps to go race… mistakes are the broken steps we need learn to fix it and self discipline is essential for everyone who try to achieve something and in life facing problem is common for anyone. we want to fight like jackie chan against the problems. and also we help others. I understand your post clearly, thanks for writting it.
Jane Sheeba says
Yup we all face hurdles. If we are determined and self disciplined we can surely find a way out! I’m glad you can easily understand the post, Naveen!
Gautham says
Hi Jane,
The crucial habit of any successfuly blogger is patience and not getting demotivated by failure, but actually consider it as a stepping stone of success.
Thanks for this article.
Mi Muba says
Hi Sheeba I happened to see you on Google plus several and first time visiting your blog. You are absolutely right successful bloggers learn from their mistakes. Secondly there is misconception about blog success formula and every successful blogger tries to impose his success formula on others. This is not right because every blogger has his own educational background, cultural affiliation, technical expertise, readers demographics, niche market challenges and above all blogging objectives. That is why there is no unified blogging success formula and as a result bloggers do mistake and then learn from their own mistakes to become successful blogger.
Lisa P Sicard says
Hi Jane, I’m working on that clarity this year. I just realized the other day when someone emailed me to subscribe that my call to action for subscribers was hard to find! I started working on the that pronto and realized I need to be more clear in what I want readers to do when they do land on my site.
Thanks for the tips here Jane. I know I got started blogging to help people and that must continue for the blog to go another 7 years 🙂
Freddy G. Cabrera says
Hey Jane!
The big ones for me here are clarity and self-discipline.
You gotta be super clear on your goals. As clear as water. The law of attraction works best for you and with you if you are super clear.
The self-discipline is going to help you stay on course taking the right actions to accomplish your clear goals. These two go hand in hand, I’d like to believe.
Thank you for sharing these!
Best regards! 😀
Robin Khokhar says
Hi Jane,
That’s an amazing post and I really liked it. You have done a great job sharing this wonderful post.
Keep it up.
Have a good week ahead.
Hannah Canavan says
Yes, I totally agree- especially with not giving up and helping others! Blogging is such a hard slog at the beginning so it is very tempting to drop out. But if you’re not in the game at all, you have 0 chance of any success! I also think helping others is crucial, the blogging world can be so competitive but there is always room for more creativity and amazing content so giving each other a boost is important.