I’m working on an upcoming launch that’s taking up my free time. I’m tired. And most times, I’d rather just hang out by the pool or just spend the day outdoors.
Then I remind myself, this thing isn’t going to finish itself.
See, the hard part about running a paid subscription newsletter or a membership site, is that you have to consistently show up and deliver fresh new content. Unlike an e-book, it’s something that you’ll be updating weekly.
Memo From the Department of Just Showing Up:
Whether your just starting a new blog or have had a blog for a while, we all want more traffic, more subscribers, and more conversions (from readers to customers). Well, unless you have a hobby blog. Because if you have a hobby blog, some of those things don’t necessarily apply to you.
So how do you get more traffic/subscribers/conversion?
The answer is simple, just show up. By writing daily/weekly in your own unique style and voice. About topics that people are interested in learning more about.
A few people who do this well:
- Seth Godin (well, duh!).
- Ev Bogue.
- Ben Settle.
- Laura Roeder.
Seth Godin writes just about daily on the topic of marketing. His posts are short, but they make you think. Ev and Ben write a daily newsletter on communication and email marketing (respectively). Again, the material is short, but it makes you think.
Lastly, Laura Roeder writes “The Dash” – a weekly social media newsletter that delivers a weekly action item for you to turn around and implement in your marketing now. It’s delivered to more than 30,000+ people. But she didn’t hit that number over-night. No. Instead she showed up week after week after week and now she has 30,000+ engaged subscribers to show for it.
How To Stay Productive When You Feel Like Procrastinating:
Here’s a short-list of things I recommend you do to stay productive…
- Use a timer. I use a simple $3 timer that I bought at Target. When I need to sit and write something, I employ a variation of the pomodoro technique. Only instead of writing for 25 minutes straight at a time, I write for 12 and take shorter breaks. Soon, I don’t even notice the timer ticket and I just keep writing.
- Break things up into smaller, achievable tasks. It feels overwhelming when you have to get a big task done. So much so that you don’t know where to start. The best way to fight against the feeling of overwhelm is to break things up into smaller, achievable tasks. Things you know you can get done in a shorter period of time.
- Celebrate (and reward yourself) for the little victories. The more you get done, the longer the break you get to take. Reward yourself for those little victories – momentum is built that way.
- Set a daily quota. In other words, how much writing do you need to get done today? 300 words? 500 words? 750 words? 1,000? Set a daily quota and stick to meeting that goal day-in and day-out. In fitness, you build your health, stamina and muscle by going to the gym every day. Here, you’re building your writing muscle by managing and hitting that daily writing quota.
So, are you working on any big, neat projects lately? What are your best tips for fighting off procrastination?
Slightly disturbed by my writing automatically being capitalised above, is this my fault or yours?!
I’m sure (or at least like to think) that most people have to wrestle with the temptation to procrastinate every day of the week and it’s simply that some are better at handling it than others. I have to say I’m very glad at the same time as jealous that I live in a country which is too cold to own a pool, I’d never get anything done!
My biggest success recently is to start getting up at 6am ever morning to work on my sites. Being up so early forces me to concentrate otherwise it feels like a waste of sleep!
Hey Ben, sorry about the “all caps” thing. I’m using native WordPress comments and that’s just how it’s coded on this particular site, but I’ll look into it as it’s thrown me off before as well.
As for the up at 6am thing, I totally see how that’s productive! As much as I try to do that myself, I have to admit that I have a bit of a hard time. When I’m traveling, it’s easy… I roll out of bed and hit the coffee machine to start brewing and I’m ready to go. I suppose I should get a coffee pot for the bedroom (kinda weird, but effective maybe?).
Otherwise, I’m a night-owl. I’ll keep working late into the night. Give me something to drink, my headphones, some techno music and I’m good to go!
I have a “minimum posts a week” goal which I make myself stick to, it means if I skip posting on a Monday then I have to spend my weekend posting instead which always annoys me as I like working on other projects at the weekend!
I also like “Celebrate (and reward yourself) for the little victories.” I use chocolate to bribe myself to write blog posts – I can’t have any until the post is finished – and I love celebrating small blogging wins. (There was a fun post on Problogger over the weekend about that.)
My best tip is the same as yours – use a variation of the Pomodoro technique and have a deadline for my post every day.
I constantly spent my hhalf aan hour to rread this blog’s articles every day along with a
mug of coffee.