Ex business partner and WordPress Expert, Steve Watson has challenged me to a 30 day blogging duel.  The aim is to create a blog from scratch and make money from blogging – any way we can.

He’s recently been very inspired by people like Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income, Glenn Allsop at Viperchill (author of the excellent ebook, which I’ve just read, Cloud Living) and Michael Dunlop at IncomeDiary.com  to really try and crack affiliate marketing and I’ve always wanted to make money from blogging, apart from selling my own products and services, so I’m up for it too.

I find writing easy but do struggle with blogging consistently and the tedious stuff like backlinking, he finds the techie and task driven stuff easier, but writing and keeping motivated harder.

Steve quite rightly says that, with our competitive natures, especially around each other, turning it into a blogging duel, like Pat Flynn and Tyrone Shum’s recent “Niche Blog Duel”

We are also going to support each other through the bits we are not good at or don’t like. Here is where I will link to the daily (weekly?) reports I create:
http://nicolacairncro.wpengine.com/making-money-from-blogging-duel/

The idea is that we each pick one of our domain names, languishing unloved in our Domains lists and work on it for 30 days, with traffic and income being our metrics.  Steve is drawing up a list of rules right now and, as soon as I get them, I’ll post them here.  He’s very strict *grin*.

He’s going to work on a site for newbies to blogging, with the emphasis on “how to” videos, and I’m going to focus on writing and interviewing (which I will get transcribed) and develop an idea in late 2009 / early 2010 I had for a book “The Success Factor” which I rather lost interest in when my fortunes took an unexpected turn for the worse, and Google decided to SLAP that URL along with my http://nicolacairncro.wpengine.com one, as “get rich quick” sites.  Bit dispiriting, that, especially as they are fine with http://TheMoneyGym.com.  Sigh.

UPDATE: As the domain I originally chose to work on had “12 pages indexed on that domain and 79 backlinks…. ” according to Steve (how does he know that?) I’m going to start with a brand new domain, purchased today DigitalMarketingBrighton.com / .co.uk where I’ll be targeting the key phrase “marketing brighton” which has 4.4 million competing pages, and where the main commercial competitors are Leapfrog, a digital marketing agency, Wired Sussex and Effective Marketing, who sit today in Position Two, Four and Five respectively.

Whose Blogging Plan Or Blueprint Are We Following?

We both rate Michael Dunlop very highly and use his WordPress Plugin Lightbox popup, so we are going to follow his 30 Day Blogging Plan.  Steve is setting up each day in Outlook and copying me in on the appointment, so it goes into my Outlook too.  He’s very organised like that and I like being organised, especially if someone else is doing the organising!

I’ve had a quick look and I’ve got a bit of a headstart as the blog is there, just need to change the theme from a squeeze page to James Dyson’s OptimizePress theme which I’m going to use (even though I know and love Frugal, I’m not great on design with that and want to get to know OptimizePress better).

My heart sank a bit when I got to Day 3 or 4 when Michael talks about customising your design but I’ve found a designer on Fiverr.com who I like so maybe that will be fun.  I find logos and stuff very dull but Steve is really good at graphic design so I have a job on my hands just to keep up with that side of things.

I’m really quite excited about it all.  Why don’t you join us and follow along – finally get that blog up, running and making money?

Use the comments / share your thoughts link to publically declare your intentions and let public accountability work for you (as well as a link from my blog to yours…)