OK, I’m up to Day 12 and I have to tell you, every day my heart sinks a little initially when I read Michael Dunlop’s instructions for the day in the 30-Day “Create A Blog” plan.

Why is this? I actually quite enjoy writing about doing it, but actually doing it is a bit more of a challenge. Isn’t that interesting? I’m a quick start 9 on the Kolbe Index, great at starting things and not so good – well, alright downright terrible! – on following through but I’m forcing myself to finish this.

It must be a bit like, learning about doing something is fun, but actually doing it is not so much fun.

I thought I’d mention it because there must be many people who have started Michael’s 30 Day Plan and not finished it. Like there must be lots of people who start Ed Dale’s famous 30 Day Challenge – actually I’m one of them!

Ed’s challenge was way too complex for me – that’s one of the things I love about Michael’s plan. I wonder if he’s following this or is blithely unaware of our Blogging Duel?

One Blogging Step At A Time, Sweet Jesus!

It’s really very simple, this plan, and I’m finding it very well paced, indeed. One job a day, getting progressively more challenging, not in terms of techie ability, but pushing you further and further towards the point of making some money. Talking of which….

$$ Update: I made my first $10 today! I was working through Day 12 and one of the things Michael says is to copy his advertising page if we want to. Well, I’m not about to do that, because it’s too comprehensive for a blog with no traffic yet, but I was looking to see what I was going to copy and came across a recommendation for a site where you can get ads made, if you don’t have one. Oooo, I thought, that’s useful to recommend to potential advertisers. They have an affiliate scheme so I signed up and guess what? They pay you $10 just for doing that!

Traffic Update: I’ve added more content, and also configured the All-In-One-SEO plugin – that might help traffic a bit. I’ve also activated the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, and I’m going to go and submit it at the Webmaster Tools section of my Google account. Don’t know if you need to do that as well as having the plugin, but Steve always does it, so I’m going to. Just in case. Traffic should start to rise now, with regular blogging.

What’s happening to Steve anyway? I know he’s been ill and has a lot of new clients but I can’t believe he would issue a challenge and then not want to win! He’s not been on Skype for a couple of days (saying he want’s no distractions – which means me!) so hopefully he’s catching up too. I really hope he’s not sick again!

And another thing this display in your blog posts thing has shown me, that my sub-heads on this blog are set up for Times Roman – it’s making me wince every time I see it but I just haven’t had time to change it yet. Focus on what’s important Nicola and a typeface don’t get you traffic or make you money!!

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