I have to confess that I hardly read any blogs in the money making online niche, because there is so much stuff written that will put me on the wrong path again, and I really want to stick to what I am doing right now and follow my own plan.

I noticed though that a lot of what is written out there is basically really bad advice, passed on from one blogger to the next and you can tell that whoever wrote it almost totally copied it from somebody else without adding any personal view or experience.

Now, this wouldn’t be bad if the information to start off with was sound advice, but I unfortunately have seen my share of wrong information on quite a few blogs these past months, which is what got me to the title of this post.

Would you read your own blog, seriously?

I mean, if your blog weren’t yours but somebody else’s, would you sign up for the rss or bookmark that blog to keep following all that the blogger was writing? Do you ever sit back and go through old posts, changing things that aren’t valid (anymore) or just delete posts for the sake of improving the content of your blog?

I have several blogs but not one of them is as “personal” as this one, this blog is my baby so to say, the blog I use to write down my thoughts, my findings, my experiences in the crazy mmo niche, and it is the blog that I promote under my own name, so I feel a big responsibility towards my readers, to provide posts that are entertaining and informative, posts that at times could help other people making money online or refer to great articles that I think need to be read if you are serious about your business online.

Like I said, I have several other blogs as well, in all sorts of niches that on one level or another are important to me and try to provide information on them that is worth reading if you are looking for information in that particular niche. However I must admit that not all information provided on there is solely written by me basically because I just don’t have the time to write everything myself. I do make sure though that everything on there is well researched and helpful for the reader, in other words I try to provide quality on all of my blogs.

Back to the initial question and more important, why I occasionally ask myself whether I would read my own blogs or not (if I would allow myself the time to spend reading blogs). I think that as a blogger or website owner, we have a responsibility towards our readers over what we put out in the world.

So I signed up for FirePow the other day, wanting to take my business to another level and adding more blogs to my portfolio in order to grow my business. It has been 3 weeks so far and once the first month is over I will surely share my experiences and thoughts with you guys.

There is one thing though that I wanted to mention right now. FirePow is a pretty powerful tool that can give your business a real big push into the right direction. Not only allows it to create a new blog within a matter of minutes, including the installation of wordpress and a theme (all is done from within one admin panel with a few clicks) but it also allows to pull content from 10 different resources so that you can instantly create blogs with content and cut down on research time in a big way. It also allows you to access all your blogs from one control panel without having to go to all different admin panels, another big time saver.

Probably the best of all though are the promotional tools it offers, a social bookmarking tool that will bookmark all your posts automatically, promotion through yahoo answers from within the admin panel as well plus a vast amount of blogs you can put a short post on, linking back to the blog you want to promote. Everything is explained through FirePow´s videos and it didn´t take a lot of time to learn quite a few nifty tricks to speed up business growth.

All in all pretty good I would say, especially if you go full into the whole process and take advantage of all tools, but like I said, a full review will be published once my first month is over.

The one thing that kept lingering on my mind was whether or not I would read the recently created blogs myself and for some reason I felt I was in way over my head to keep up with all that I am doing already. More about that in the near future as well but right now I want to finally get to the point:

I believe that 80% to 90% of all the bloggers out there would not read there own blog because they suck, and even that number might be on the low side!

Don’t get me wrong here, not saying they intentionally build bad blogs, but I think a lot of bloggers out there aren’t critical enough when it comes to their own work and what they publish on their blogs and if they were forced to read their blog for a month or two, they’d run away screaming!

So that was my thought for today, start reading your own blog through the eyes of your readers and ask yourself:

Would you read your own blog?

is turning out a lot harder than I initially thought it would be!

When initially deciding I wanted to have a little break, relax, enjoy and look at all my options, I thought I could just resume blogging on the date I had set before going off.

Little did I know that my time off would have such a huge impact, it feels like my mind has gone through a complete reset, and as a result, many habits have been reset as well.

I was one of those people who would check email, comments and stats just too many times a day, but boy, did I break through that pattern!

After posting my announcement of being back, I switched off my computer not to turn it on again until today and it is only now that it really feels ok to go back again, adding things-to-do to my day.

I was still on this high, I just can’t express how great is was to have my mom and friend over for a short week, especially since it made me see just how important family bonds are, something that is easy to forget after 10 years living on my own in a foreign country.

A few months ago I was reading about the 20/80 rule, that says most people spend 80% of their time on things that aren’t productive, productive being described as things that really work for you, whether that be business wise, family wise etc.

The initial break I set for myself, was to make a clean cut and evaluate just were my time went, because I can tell you right now, that even though it felt I was really working hard, I can see now it just wasn’t leading me anywhere.

Another thing “going on in my life” has gotten me think about something else, I am about to land my first huge commission (well over $1000) on just one sale, without using any tricks, without selling a crappy product and it isn’t online either. All of a sudden all my initial hang-ups on making money through commissions have disappeared and made me realize it is possible staying close to my own values and making money in the process.

Quite awesome to see this all happening after such a long time of struggling, however I do feel there is another way to go at it and build up a steady income stream without having to toss my values out the door.

When I first started this blog, I never meant for it to become a blog about making money, I only wanted a place to vent, test out methods I was using and writing about the progress and effects, but little by little the focus is going into another direction and more and more this is becoming a place dear to me.

The problem with having something become dear to me, is that I tend to spend too much time on it, wanting to nurture it, make it grow and become special, and again I started to fall into the 20/80 percent theory, and have my vision become blurry.

I have started a new project this week though and really need to stay on track this time, giving it all I have and make sure I don’t shortcut myself by becoming sidetracked again.

So after thinking a lot about it, one of the best ways to stay on track probably is becoming accountable for it, so I will start blogging on my progress after I have finished the initial set-up process which should be over the course of next week.

If you have been reading my lasts posts and comments, you can already see what I am starting to set up, kind of is a no-brainer so I won’t say too muchabout it at this point in time. I do hope however to be able to report some exciting updates pretty soon so stay tuned!

Growing up, my father always told me I would never be rich, because I just liked to live an easy life without too many problems. I guess he came to that conclusion because I was always an even-tempered person, offering a shoulder to lean on for anybody who needed it, and never wanting to do wrong.

Now I finally see how his statements have planted little seeds in the back of my head, that anything I would do would not make me rich anyways.

After all, “being rich meant life is not easy”. So basically I learned it was wrong to be rich. He has done really well for himself money wise, but emotionally he is probably the poorest person I know, not being able to express feelings and needing his monetary status to boost his ego. Because of many little things that happened in the past, the more I came to think of it, the worst it was to be rich.

So guess what, I have been having a huge problem with trying to make more money than what I strictly needed to survive. I have had a huge problem making money because of that inner battle caused by my belief system, my values and ethics.

I did not want to be like my dad, who I felt looks down at poorer people, I did not want to be like him, putting a value on people based on the things they owned.

More than anything did I want to be liked for other reasons, my sincerity, my caring personality and ability to empathize with others, my generosity and giving each and everybody the same possibilities until they themselves would show me otherwise by their actions.

And you know what, all this stuff has been holding me back. All these little seeds that were planted ages ago have been growing into big firm trees, believers of the “do-no-wrong-on-others” train of thought and especially the “being rich means you need to profit from others, take advantage of them and look down on them”

Remember I mentioned I used to work as a car salesperson? I hated it, totally hated it, I just could not get myself to sell a too expensive car to people who could not really afford it. I could not get myself to convince people that the car they were looking at was the one they could not live without. I basically could not do it, because I was always looking at their best interest, not being able to combine that with my best interest in a way that would be ethically justifiable in my eyes.

So guess what, I turned to earning money online, basically so I would not have to trick people into buying stuff and spend their money in order to get ahead myself. I have been struggling for well over a year and a half and when I started this particular blog I was still (and am) severely struggling to make ends meet month after month, up to the point that at times I would have to chose between buying food for my dogs and horses or my own bread.

And the more I was struggling, the more this inner gut feeling started nagging. The more inner battles came up, fighting internally between getting back to a low paid job and giving up, or continue doing what I was doing, fighting to find solutions that would be in line with my own values.

If you have read my blog for a while, you know that I have been posting on things like integrity, sincerity and people taking advantage of others in order to get ahead themselves. I was never able to offer solutions because I just did not have them myself, but my posts would get quite a lot of feedback after such a short existence, which helped me a lot on my way and maybe does offer something valuable to people reading between the lines.

I grew up with a handicapped sister who to this day has a really negative attitude towards people and life in general. Many have said to me things like “who can blame her for her way of dealing with life if you look at the cards she was dealt” whenever I expressed my worries about how our own attitude towards life attracts exactly what we think of ourselves. Before I moved to Spain over 10 years ago, I knew her handicap would get her into bigger troubles, but I just had to leave the negative environment I felt I was in.

Unfortunately I was right. She has been slammed with cancer and has been fighting to conquer that for the past 3 or 4 years. It is heartbreaking to see that my gut feeling was so dead on. For many years I have felt guilty for what she uses to say to me, “you have it all and I have nothing”. Having “it all”, being happy, succesfull, etc, turned into a negative thing without me noticing it.

I got into reading a lot of books related to the force behind “The Secret” and the “Law of Attraction”. And it was this morning that I received a “Note from the Universe”, a daily emailing service I have signed up for many months ago. Today’s message gave me the chills and brought me to tears. To me it relates directly to the feelings I have been trying to deal with regarding my dad.

What if the one person

who you believed liked you the least,

Mirjam,

loved you the most?

Yeah,

“Hate when that happens….”
The Universe

A light bulb moment, I think I have judged him wrong all these years and holding on to the grudge I have felt towards him has only made me hurt myself. I am pretty sure he won´t read this, but if he does one day, please know I misunderstood your actions.

It feels like all of a sudden, in a matter of 24 hours, a lot of thoughts have come together and fallen into place. A lot of answers I was looking for without realising it myself. I found the answer to my own issues regarding money and why it was I could not get myself to actually do what I need to do.

There is no way I could ever blame anyone for what has happened in my childhood that made me believe making money or being truly happy was a bad thing. Nor would I ever blame other people’s actions and things they have said to me that have hurt me deep down. I can only be grateful for knowing that deep down they really cared for me all time and love me unconditionally.

It has made me into the person I am today.

But now I found just how much things being said to me repeatedly in the past have put such a profound stamp on my belief system, without me realizing the full and extended consequences. It is only down to me now to take full responsibility over the actions I take from hereon and the way I live the rest of my life.

I am going to take Vic’s advice of enjoying my b-day next week. There are exactly 8 days left to my party, but only 6 for my mother to arrive who lives at 2400 kilometres from here. I haven’t seen her for many months and am so looking forwards to her being here.

I will be taking some time off to do things for myself and do a little pampering. I will be checking in to read comments and reply but will not post until the 15th since I will be busy finally setting up a plan of action and focus and do a lot of celebrating once my mom gets here.

Thank you all so much, for reading me, for commenting, for giving me little pieces to the puzzle, for supporting me and for just being there! Thank you for writing all those inspiring posts I have been reading lately. It means the world to me, more than you will ever know.