How to Create Your Own Blogging Road Map

For everyone who is reading this article today, what do we all have in common? What do I have in common with John Chow? What do you have in common with John Chow? Why are we here reading John’s blog? Whether you are looking to retire at 30, quit your day job, or spend more time with your kids, we are all here to become successful Internet Marketers.

My name is Taylor Thomson, and like yourself, I am striving to become a successful Internet Marketer. Like you, I have had many questions regarding my previous failures running through my head:

“What I am doing wrong?”

“Why am I stuck?”

“How come I am not making more money?”

As we sit here and ponder over questions like these for hours, days, weeks, months, or even years, we eventually hope that a light bulb will go off above our heads, finally giving us an answer to the questions that have plagued us for so long. For many, this light bulb will never go off. For those who work hard, it eventually will, and when it does, you will have a road map to your pending success.

On June 18th, 2010, my light bulb went off, and after 3 years of blogging at $1,000 a month (most recently), I have finally acquired my road map to success. My goal of this article is to show you how to create your own road map, so you can also become a successful Internet Marketer.

Remember, once you have acquired your road map, whether that be my road map, which I will share with you at then end of this article, or that of your own, you must follow it to become successful. A map is only as useful as the one who uses it. If you let your map sit in the dust, your business will undoubtedly perish.

How to Create Your Own Road Map to Success.

This section of my post is going to teach you how to create your own road map to success. If you have already tried creating your own road map, but can’t seem to get a grip on it, the following steps will help you along the way.

Step 1. What do you need to do daily to become successful?

John Chow, Darren Rowse, Shoe Money, Brian Clark, (to name a few) and every blogger who has ever been successful is not so by accident. Each of these well respected individuals are successful because they prioritize their work.

All successful business people have an answer to the question, “What do you need to do daily to become successful?” Do you have an answer?

Take the time to create an outline of what you need to do daily to become successful.

Step 2. Narrow down your daily tasks to those that are most important.

For your business, what tasks are going to make you the most money, and what tasks can be labeled as a waste of time? If your daily tasks include content creation, guest posts, Twitter updates, answering emails, and making friends on Facebook, for example, which of these tasks can you do without?

Essentially, you’re trying to make the most of your time by performing only the daily tasks that will benefit your business. This is often known as, “setting your priorities straight.” I have also heard another Blogger say something like, “Do only the 5% of tasks that really matter.” Everyone who has ever been successful has their priorities organized correctly.

Step 3. Eliminate impossible expectations.

People who are successful are so because they eliminate impossible expectations. Don’t take a bite bigger than you can chew. If you want to be successful, set reasonable expectations to what you can do every day to get there. For example: It’s probably not in your best interest to say that you’re going to publish 10 300-word articles a day, if you only have 2 hours a day to work.

When you take a look at your daily tasks, really think about how long it will take you to complete each task. If you think you’re taking a bite bigger than you can chew, cut your bite down to something that’s more reasonable. This way, you can really focus on the quality and not the quantity of your work.

Step 4. Create a checklist.

You finally know exactly what to do daily to be successful. What better way to stay organized and complete your tasks than with a checklist? Checklists will keep you on track by allowing you to really see and focus on the tasks at hand.

Step 5. Don’t let distractions get in your way.

Without a checklist, many people are distracted by tasks that will not make their business money. For example: You spend the day changing your banner, when you should be writing articles. Of course your web banner is important, but not as important as the top 5% of tasks that are actually going to make you money.

Whenever a side task appears, you can add it to the, “less important things that need to be done” checklist. Many people get so distracted with side tasks, that they forget to complete the tasks that make them money.

Step 6. Perform and make adjustments where necessary.

Congratulations. You have finally gone through the hardships of creating your road map to success. What do you do next?

In order to be successful, you need to follow the road map that you have created.

Furthermore, you need to make adjustments where necessary. There may be many road blocks that appear along the way, and this is where adjustments will be required. If something was previously making you money for example, and is no longer doing so, make the proper adjustments to bypass this roadblock, and continue on with your journey to success.

My Road Map to Success.

Road maps are never fancy, but they do help you get to where you need to be. On my road map, which I have been working on for over 3 years, and will finally begin following on the 24th of this month, I have only a small handful of tasks that I need to do daily to become successful.

My road map tells me that I need to work Monday through Friday to bring success my way. I want to now take the time to share my road map with you, and why each of my tasks are important to my success.

Step 1. Write 2 articles on my site.

This isn’t anything fancy, but it’s the only way to succeed as a professional blogger. I will have myself writing 2 quality articles every day, for my website.

This may not seem like much, but I am no longer focusing on the number of articles that I write. This time around, I truly want to write full, quality articles.

Step 2. Contact 3 professional bloggers about guest post opportunities.***

This is my true secret to success. On January 18th, 2010, this is the light bulb that went off in my head, and hopefully, I can get it to also go off in yours. After reading Erica.biz, I new that I needed to add one thing to my road map that I didn’t have in each of my previous versions: friends. More importantly, friends that are professional bloggers.

Since my light bulb went off, I have submitted a guest post to Smart Bloggerz (approved) and Erica.biz (awaiting approval). Since you’re reading this article, you will know that I have also submitted a guest post to JohnChow.com.

Meeting other professional bloggers is extremely important for your ultimate success. With professional blogging buddies, you can bring a website that is literally brand new, thousands of new visitors or even hundreds of thousands of new visitors overnight.

Please don’t misunderstand me, folks. Our goal isn’t to try to “use” professional bloggers to make ourselves successful. Instead, our goal is to submit quality content to websites owned by professional bloggers. In return, the pro blogger does us a favor by allowing us to include an author box in our article.

For the above reasons, I need to contact 3 professional bloggers every day, to ask them if they would allow me to do a guest post on their site. To take things one step further, I have created a document of all of the bloggers that I am friends with. This way, I can keep in touch with my blogging buddies.

Step 3. Write 1 guest post a day.***

This goes with my above secret. After contacting 3 professional bloggers for guest post opportunities, some will approve, and some will decline. For the bloggers that have given me a chance to write a guest post on their site, it’s time to begin writing.

The goal for me is not to spam the blogger. Again, it’s important to focus on quality over quantity. It’s not every day that you’re going to get an opportunity to post on a site like JohnChow.com, so you better make your article the best article that it can be.

Don’t submit useless junk that everybody else is already familiar with. Submit something truly unique. Submit something that will truly benefit others.

Also, it’s important to take a good amount of time writing your guest posts. I’ve been working on this article for about 5 hours now, and counting.

Step 4. Build backlinks.

I’m not as worried about this as I used to be, simply because I am now getting backlinks through quality guest posts. Still, it’s a good idea to get backlinks from other sources. This could mean doing a quality forum post or blog comment with your link attached, or submitting your articles to social bookmarking websites.

Recently, I read a post called, “The Backlinking Strategy that Works.” I highly recommend reading it, if you don’t know where else to look.

Final Thoughts.

Although my road map to success may be different from your road map, we all followed the same 6 steps to creating our road map. Every blogger who has ever been successful has followed each of the 6 steps, whether they realize it or not, and now it’s our turn.

My name is Taylor Thompson, and I teach people how to build muscle and get in shape at Do Strong dot com (My newest blog). I have been blogging since January 3rd, 2008, and have finally developed a strategy that if followed correctly, will bring me success.

I would truly like to thank John for allowing me to guest post on his blog. I have been following John since I started blogging back in 2008. My favorite post here at John Chow would have to be on how to really make money with Clickbank. Although I don’t actually use the strategies presented in this article, if I ever decided to truly promote Clickbank products, I would definitely follow the strategies that John presents.