Road Ahead – David Risley got me to spill the beans

(Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes)

You know, sometimes I REALLY hate Google, because they “know best” for me. This article is not finished, by a long shot, but I accidently hit the publish button and it’s in my Google RSS cache permanently, with a stupid working title and stupid permalink. Yes, I can change the permalink, then I have to monitor my redirects. No way out. And why is this? Because that’s how Google Reader is designed: it caches on the permalink, forever.

So if you just dropped in, feel free to refresh every few minutes while I update this.

In any case, David Risley posted this challenge article Blog Giveaway: Win Copy Of Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It!”. You should go there and enter the challenge as well. Here’s a recap to refresh your mind after you wade through all the comments:

I [DR] want to pick the top 10 contest entries who are absolutely crushing it. I want to reward people for taking action and making things happen as bloggers.. So, you can enter this contest by doing the following two actions:

1. Post a comment below and tell me and everybody else what you have accomplished so far this year to CRUSH IT with your blog. What will you do in the next 3 months? What are you doing differently to really step up your game? How are you actively making 2010 an absolutely killer year for your life as a blogger?
2. Retweet a link to this post and tell your followers that you’ve entered the contest.

I left a lengthy comment over on David’s site. An expanded version of that comment follows.

Here’s what’s been happening on Website In A Weekend, and where we’re going:

• Website In A Weekend eCourse published in January. 25 modules, all freely available, now in weekly rotation to stay up to date.
• Raised prices across the board, which is yielding more sales. My previous (and current) low prices reflect a lack of business experience and, frankly, low business self-esteem. I have no problem admitting what’s patently obvious… just don’t think it’s going to stay that way…
• Readership doubled, over 12,000 per month from 6,000 in December 2009. (Thanks in part to James Richmond for tactical advice). I’ll be stepping this up again to double twice over in 2010, target 50,000 monthly readers.

  Am I thinking too small? Should I be going after 100,000 readers monthly? Maybe so, the market is still growing and fast.

• Developed 2 new high end website/internet marketing clients; boutique, custom work. Looking to pick up 1 new high end client per month through the rest of the year.

  I’ve already introduced Mo Mellady’s Planet Check website, will be introducing my current project in a month or so.

  By the way, if you’re in the market for a totally unique, completely custom WordPress-based website that looks nothing like a “blog,” contact Dori Yuen. Dori and I worked together on Planet Check and my current project. You won’t find anything else like her work anywhere.

• Blog Post Engineering ebook launches May 5. This is The Last Word in publishing a single blog post, 50 pages worth or material taking that single blog post from title through SEO all the way to promotion (“be everywhere”).

  Blog Post Engineering comes with a “Lifetime Warranty.” I use the book myself (that’s why I wrote it). As I add material, I will periodically issue free upgrades to customers. There’s about 20 copies left for the pre-launch release with ~50% discount (use code “Easter”).

• Continue to focus on delivering superior quality material.

  I have to make another confession: I tend to see the flaws in my writing rather than the strengths. It gets me down when I know that my best isn’t my best. Which motivates me to try a lot harder. You benefit.

• Continue building staff. I have 3 confirmed staff authors (Gabe, Anna and Aaron), and 2 tentative (Dave and Rachna).

  By confirmed, I mean their 2010 articles are finished and pending-in-queue for publication. This is not a promise for future delivery, these authors have already delivered. Dave and Rachna have given me “All systems go!” I just haven’t spent the time putting their material in queue yet.

  Anyone interested in guest posting or a staff author position, contact me. It’s easy to make promises, I’m looking for more: delivery up front. The Website In A Weekend guest post policy is very liberal, and the Website In A Weekend audience is diverse enough to support a wide range of material.

• Alexa 3 month stats have improved from 90k to under 50k. This is on track for moving down to 20k by years end.

  Should I be more ambitious? Harsh Agrawal took Shout Me Loud from PR0 to PR5 in a year, with Alexa under 8k. I’m very impressed with what he achieved.

• Plugin development and coding: Without tipping my hand too much, my hRecipe semantic web plugin usage is growing well, despite no promotion at all. I’ll be promoting hRecipe heavily over the rest of the year and get a jump on semantic web technology (coming to a blog near you… did I just tip my hand?)

  Also, food bloggers seem to be an odd bunch from my perspective. If I have any food bloggers out there, please leave me a note. You can find a lot of help on Website In A Weekend, I’ll show you where to look.

More more more… WordPress Whitepapers… I have 6 in draft, 5 more outlined. These Whitepapers are The Last Word on their topic. Very tightly focused, action oriented, and maintained. I use these whitepapers myself.

Two reasonably priced membership sites are in development right now, the first one will launch in mid-May: Blog Maintenance Challenge. 15 modules for small business owner to learn “care and feeding” of their WordPress blog. Content is dripped so that people aren’t overwhelmed with too much stuff. That’s happened to me in the past.

Want more?

• Adopted the Estimated Reading Time plugin, expect a new release very shortly.
• More tutorial plugins coming, with tentative plans for a plugin tutorial ebook. (Still gauging the market on that one).
• Page Rank hit 4, up 2 in 6 months. I can do better, I can hit 6 by December. Keller Hawthorne did PR0 to PR6 in 9 months, I should be able to increase from 4 to 6 in that time frame. Page rank really does matter to search results, my traffic increases with my page rank.

  I realize there’s a lot controversy about page rank. I’m ok with that. If you aren’t interested increasing your page rank, I’m happy for you. I am, and you should be happy for me.

• Currently ranking for some important key words in WordPress development (e.g., register_activation_hook) leading people with pain points directly to my site. I’ll continue to nail down more of these by trawling the usual forums for frustrated users then posting the *correct* answer (because I tested it) on my site. Will start gunning down keywords in blogosphere as well.

There’s more, but I like to have things “in the can” before announcing.

What about you?

If you didn’t comment over on David Risley’s article, perhaps you could share what you have in store on your blog, business or website.

You don’t have to share it all, just something cool that you’re proud of.