5:09 PM.
Friday evening.
I just returned home from New York City.
I pondered a few ideas after responding to comments on Blogging From Paradise and commenting on a few top blogs.
What would I do next?
1 idea immediately popped into my mind: write a guest post.
I love writing guest posts. I love helping people. I love giving. I love getting too. I enjoy earning money. I enjoy receiving blog comments. I enjoy seeing traffic flow to my blog. All good. All fun.
But I enjoy giving as much as I enjoy getting. I like writing this guest post with zero expectations. I will submit for review to Enstine. I leave it at that.
I am not trying to squeeze anything out of these posts. Sure I grow my email list, increase my blog traffic and boost my blogging profits by publishing guest posts here. But honest to goodness, I write these posts because I have fun writing and enjoy helping people with blogging.
After publishing well over 1000 guest posts I can honestly say that no way can I write, submit and publish so many guesties if my mind was infected with a 6 word phrase that strickens so many bloggers. Struggling bloggers. Failing bloggers. Even successful bloggers who strain, strive and worry their way to the top, never enjoying the ride.
What are the 6 words?
“What Will I Get From This?”
Some bloggers, the way they write, or scour over opportunities, you would believe they demand a 1-for-1, immediate transaction for any service rendered. If they publish a guest post somewhere they better grow their email list, increase their traffic and see a skyrocketing profits boost by a few hours or maybe a day after seeing their guest post published.
If they don’t see glowing returns they will never, ever submit a guest post to the blog again.
Because they run their blog with these 6 words in mind: what will I get from this?
The core problem with this mindset is it rests on a foundation of fear. That fear is 2 pronged, sprouting both stinginess and greediness at once. The blogger fears giving away too much free information because they fear they will lose money in so doing. But they also fear that they will not make enough money writing the guest post so they greedily try to piggishly gobble up as many email subscribers and customers and clients as possible through the guest post.
This desperate, disgusting mindset is mired in fear.
When you do things mainly from fear, you kill your blogging career. (This is my rapping blogger lyric for the day.)
It is the *complete and utter opposite* of blogging from an abundant, generous energy, a loving energy.
Your blogging career cannot get off the ground if you are trying like crazy to get, because you only get freely when you give freely.
I am so busy helping folks and having fun and spreading love and thinking of ways to give, you may see me in 1, 5, or 10,000 places online. I am not kidding about the last number. Because I have written and published almost 600 guest posts between Blogging Tips and The Huffington Post alone.
Factor in my hundreds of other guest posts on various blogs, plus my hundreds of interviews, plus my 3000 plus Warrior Forum posts plus the 115,000 views on my Quora answers and you get the sense that I rarely if ever think, “What will I get from this?”
Taking this tact, and doing things mainly from an energy of giving, loving, service, generosity, abundance and fun has helped me get more easily, from my traffic, to email list size, to my blogging profits. I never sit there and spend more than a split second thinking of getting something from guest posts or interviews. I don’t see every engagement as a one to one transaction, where I need to get something, if I am giving something.
Heck yeah I love getting stuff. Heck yeah I have opened over 10 income streams on my blog. Heck yeah I just sold another eBook a few minutes ago and celebrated the sale. I still live a worldly life. I am not like the monks I see when traveling through Thailand, owning a few robes, asking for food every morning, shunning physical possessions.
But I am all about giving. I focus most of my energies on serving others.
The more freely you give – without strings attached – the more freely you get, blogging-wise.
Before you ponder trying to squeeze something out of every little or large interaction, trying to get anything from it, just give, for the joy of giving. Be generous. Be abundant.
The amount of getting you do will far exceed anything you have ever imagined when you are acting abundant and being generous with your time and skills.
Your Turn
How are you being generous with your blogging skills?