It's been a long year and I've gotten a lot accomplished. Looking back I have to say that the one thing that helped me do so much is doing what I love to do. My advice to anyone trying to start a new blog, write for a living or become an artist of any sorts is to do what is in your heart. Let me explain why. I know it sounds maybe a bit cliche' but the truth is this: you are going to be so much better doing what you enjoy that what you dislike. For instance, I used to write how to articles and get paid for articles on subjects that bored the heck out of me. Needless to say it wasn't my best work and I found myself dreading the fact of hitting the "submit" button because my name would ever be associated with a boring crappy article on a topic I hated. So one day I just stopped doing it.
Last December I started a blog about something I enjoy, (
vintage plastics) and in just one year it's had over 42000 visitors and zoomed to Page Rank 4. Now I don't care if it stays at a PR4 or PR3 or anything for that matter, what matters to me is I loved doing every post and I'm glad that people enjoy reading it as much as I like writing it. Now you can't do everything for free, so I do get paid for advertising or will get paid to feature someone's shop on there, and that's all great but the best part is having creative control over things. I even started a vintage blog, because I liked it. Then I started another blog
giving away free graphics. I was bloggin' my life away.
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| Someone told me not to use this background for my Vintage Chalet blog but I did it anyways because I liked it. |
Creative control is very important. If the core of your existence is telling you not to sell that t-shirt design and forever lose the rights, don't do it. Open a t-shirt shop because your design is good. If you second guess yourself or listen to others you may miss an opportunity. Stick with your gut and take the leap of faith. If you have faith in yourself you can move mountains. Now you also have to have faith that you can do anything that life throws at you. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is your business, career, or success. You have to work hard at it, and when you fall just pick yourself up and wipe the dirt off and try again.
I guess there's two three types of people.
- Those who try, and try, and try, until they succeed.
- Those who try, fail, and give up.
- Those who dream, but never try at all.
If you are #2 or #3, know it's never too late to try.
See you in 2012.
