A New Year is a new start; whether you see it that way or not. You unfold something new. You have a block of something fresh ahead of you!
Entering a New Year is like starting something fresh. Usually the enthusiasm is pumped up. All motivated. All is well. Until the end of January; or perhaps until the end of the second week of January.
And then every day is just like any other day, as it used to be a couple of weeks before.
Many people let years slip through their fingers without taking the days seriously. While every New Year is like a fresh diary given to us, it also indirectly reminds us that we have used up another year in our lifetime and have gone to the next.
It is said that we should live our life as if today is the last day. It is true. What if all you have is this year? What if all you have is just today?
I’m not scaring you here - but we have to take things seriously and not let this New Year to pass by just like any other year in the past.
So what do good habits have to do with this?
Good habits help you transform. Transformation is necessary to make a change and to succeed in life and business.
Put simply, if things are not going well, or if you have hit a plateau, you need to stop doing the same thing over and over again - coz you cannot expect different or better results.
You need to transform at this point. You need a change. You need to analyse the route cause of the stagnation and do a major clean up and change course.
Good habits help you do that.
In order for you to succeed with your blogging business this year, I have compiled a list of 16 good habits. I hope you don’t simply leave after reading this post but put the information here to good use!
And oh, these good habits will not only transform your blogging business but they will also transform your personal life.
Let’s get to the habits, shall we?
#1 Have a clear vision
It can be anything that you want to achieve. But make sure you know what it is. Be absolutely sure about what you want to achieve. Know your destination. Also know your plan, clearly.
It is important that you clearly see what you want the end product to be; or where you want to end up; you need to clearly define your success.
Without that definition, you won’t be able to succeed. Sorry if I’m talking negative at this time of the year. But that is the plain fact.
A clear vision helps you define your success; it helps you identify what you want. Without knowing what you want, will you be able to achieve it? Certainly not, right?
Many bloggers I came across in my consultation service last year didn’t have a clear vision. They didn’t know what they want with their blogs. They didn’t even know what they were “trying” to do with their blogs!
So how can you expect to succeed with your blog if you don’t know what your “success” is? Success is a very common word; but it is different for different people. For some, making $100 per month as a side income could be success. For some turning their blog into a full time income source could be success.
For some bloggers, spreading the word about their book and making their book a successful project via their blog is “success”. And for some other bloggers, being able to get new clients every month through their blog for the service they offer is success.
Everyone’s definition of success is different. What’s YOURS? Without clearly knowing that, you are wasting time writing those awesome blog posts and doing guest blogging or whatever to promote your blog.
Without a clear vision you will end up nowhere and you will ruin all your efforts for nothing. It is the time of the year where you must stand up and take action. If your vision is blurry, take the time to sit down and clear it up first before putting in any more time and effort on your blog.
#2 Don’t give up. Be persistent.
Blogging can be stressful. Blogging can be overwhelming. It can be something like hitting a brick wall. It can be a daunting task. It can be something that you never seem to understand.
You would be surprised to know how every other blogging in the world except you is able to succeed with their blogs. It could be frustrating to read the income reports of successful bloggers for the past couple of years - those bloggers started blogging just about when you started!
First of all, if you feel overwhelmed, it is totally normal. Blogging can sometimes be overwhelming because blogging is not just about writing blog posts and hitting the publish button (the word “blogging” seems to tell you so). But blogging is a LOT more than that.
And if you want to achieve something with your blog (like “succeed”) you have to go the extra mile. You have to do a LOT of other things that are not just publishing blog posts.
So, the combination of too much work and too little recognition could force you to quit. Just be persistent. A very big number of blogs that are started are abandoned.
If you truly have a clear vision and a clear goal, keep going. Never stop. Never compare yourself with other bloggers. Your journey is unique and no one else has taken this road.
If you feel like giving up, just know that it is normal too. Many successful bloggers you see now have had at least one “let me quit it” moments. I’ve had it too. Just hang on. You are about to make it.
On a side note though, if you are doing the same thing and expecting massive results or changes, that won’t happen, as we all know. If you need to see massive results you need to stop doing what you are doing, analyse and do things differently. Observing (not comparing yourself to) successful bloggers and their strategies and implementing them to your blogging is a good thing.
#3 Bounce back whenever you feel like hitting the bottom
When you feel like it is the end of the world, gather all your strength and hope and bounce back. This might sound like a strange thing to do, when you have lost all hope and strength. But this is what you absolutely need to do at those times.
According to nature and from my personal experience and those of the other people that I saw, I can say that when you are hitting the bottom it is also usually the time to bounce back - just about! Trust me on this 
When you feel like everything’s over and that the sky is falling, just step back, unplug, take a break, and take a deep breath. Do not make any decisions while you’re in that situation, obviously.
Take time to evaluate the situation and see if you can do anything to improve it. Find out the root causes of “why” this happened so you can weed it out.
While you’re at it, gather all your strength and hope and bounce back with full strength!
#4 Analyze every step before proceeding
You might have wasted a lot of days by putting quite some effort into blogging activities; and you might be wondering why you are unable to reap any benefits out of your efforts. You missed doing something!
Yes I hear you - you might have worked really hard but unless you take the time to stop and analyse what you have done, there is no point in moving forward to the next step.
Every step in your business demands your precious time, effort and sometimes money right? How come you fail to take the time and analyse whether what you did worked or not? If you don’t analyze you won’t know whether your strategy worked or not!
And if you don’t analyse and keep doing what you were doing, you could be doing the same thing over and over again and be expecting results (while your strategy doesn’t work!).
#5 Be open and keep learning
You could be doing stuff online for 10 years! Or you could be a complete newbie to whatever you are doing. Nevertheless, it is highly important that you are open to learning new things on a consistent basis.
If you are a newbie, don’t be put off by the fact that you are new to things and everything around you looks so geeky. You can learn everything, just be open!
If you are an experienced blogger, don’t think that you know everything. It is still important to be open and to keep up with the advancements everyday.
If you get stuck somewhere, find out the root cause, and then find out the solutions. In case you don’t have time to deal with things yourself, you can absolutely outsource. But make sure you enquire what went wrong and how to avoid such a situation - learn the background stuff, even if you don’t deal with the dirty stuff yourself.
#6 Network and build a lot of genuine connections
If you consider networking to be a painful task associated with blogging, it will be hard for you to succeed in blogging. Sorry to be a bearer of bad news, but it is a fact. I don’t want to encourage you with false motivating claims. I want you to tell the truth so you can succeed, really (instead of dreaming about it).
I don’t see how networking could be a pain (as some bloggers claim it to be and hence ignore it altogether). I see networking as a fun part of my business.
Come on - how could meeting and talking to new people be NOT fun? It is fun (at least to me) and it is the thing I enjoy the most in my business.
Always look out for ways to genuinely connect with people as you evolve in your blogging business.
#7 Practice and master blogging skills
You need skills to excel. Ranging from typing fast to being able to design your optin form, if your blogging business requires it, you have to equip yourself for the same!
Of course you can outsource certain tedious tasks, but you cannot run a business blindly with complete outsourcing.
You need to develop the necessary skills - the basic ones and the ones you need to progress forward in your business fast. You should never let lack of skillfulness become a barrier to your business growth - NEVER!
#8 Be prolific
Come on, this is 2015 and you can only succeed by being prolific. You cannot be slacking off and working when you get the time. You cannot write a blog post when you have the time - you cannot treat blogging like a hobby.
If you want your blogging business to generate profits for you, you gotta treat it like business. No business generates revenue without hard work. And in these ages simply hard work won’t cut it.
You have to work smart. You have to be prolific. You have to leverage on your efforts.
Know how to repurpose your content for maximum reach and provide variety to your readers. In short, make the most out of your efforts and at the same time provide a variety of useful stuff to your readers.
#9 Be down to earth and help as much as possible
If you want to win fans for life and if you want to change people’s lives you gotta help them. Your business needs to produce something that changes people’s lives; that proves useful to them.
You should be willing to put up content or products where you openly discuss matters that help your audience. If you tried something and failed terribly, don’t hide it from your readers in an attempt to look “professional”.
Failure is not something to be ashamed of! Be down to earth and share it with your readers so they can use your experience for their good.
Also if someone reaches you out for help, and if you can do it, just do it. Usually you’ll get emails or shoutouts from your readers with questions - if their question is something that can be answered in an email, go ahead and do it.
But I have to give a word of warning here: This doesn’t mean you should be spending all your time in replying to emails from your readers about every question on blogging (like: How do I start a blog? And How to make money blogging?).
You have to draw the line at the point where you feel its absolutely necessary. For instance, you could offer free advice for a few emails back and forth and then tell your reader nicely that you could help him/her on a dedicated consultation package if they want more solid 1-on-1 advice.
#10 Keep negativity at bay
Negativity sucks the energy and momentum out of your life. Keep it at bay. Don’t let it come any near into your head. You should also keep people who have negative thoughts out of your field. Don’t pay attention to those people who do negative conversations with you or treat things in life negatively.
A simple negative thought can take you back years and can completely pull you down to the bottom. It can stop you from taking any positive action and to improve. It can make you a bad person altogether.
A simple positive thought is all powerful and is what all you need - even at times when you feel its the end of the world. Trust me on this!
#11 Anticipate expenses and save accordingly
With blogging, one of the most challenging things is to make money. Money is one of the top reasons why most bloggers are unable to stick around.
Making money is on the one hand; while on the other hand is spending it wisely. With blogging, most bloggers prefer to start free and I’m totally against it. If you want to start a business, you have to invest in it.
Once you start investing, things become serious. And this also means you should start making money off your business because you cannot be simply investing on something that doesn’t give you anything back.
Now, there are some bloggers who start off with an investment (great) and also make money accordingly (double great!). But then they don’t anticipate blogging expenses.
Blogging, just like any other business, needs money to keep running. It is not like you set up one time (with an investment) and then forget about it. You have running costs - hosting your website, that SEO tool, that link building tool, that email autoresponder and things like these!
Most of these tools require you to pay on a monthly or yearly subscription if you want to keep using them. And you might incur some unexpected expenses as you go!
It is important that you keep a back up of your income - you have to save both for the ongoing expenses and for anything unexpected to come.
#12 Take risk, change course - if you have to
So you have been doing stuff for a while and you don’t get the results you expect. So you stop and analyse. You see if you could change your strategies to make things work!
So you did try out different things. You approached your goals with different strategies. But still you don’t get any results.
So now you are confused! You find yourself in the middle of a long lonely road, confused. You certainly don’t want to keep trying out different things since you have already done enough and got no results.
Your inner self says you need to change course; and that you need to stop doing what you do and take a risk.
If so, do it!
You might feel scared to take a risk. But in business taking risks are unavoidable. If you avoid taking risks when you need to do something that is absolutely needed, you will lose big time.
Of course, a risk is a risk - there is a chance of failure. But without taking a risk you have a 100% assurance that you will fail.
#13 Maintain a premium standard
Never ever compromise on this one; if you’ve already been compromising on maintaining premium standards in your business, you have to change that attitude this year.
Don’t go cheap on anything. Cheap hosting, cheap web design, cheap email autoresponder, cheap SEO - you gotta get rid of all cheap stuff and take your blog seriously, if you want people to take you seriously.
And if you want to charge premium prices, you have to have premium products served on a premium platter. Don’t think of anything less than that from this year forward!
#14 Busyness is not life; Thrive instead
Are you busy? Of course you are! But that doesn’t necessarily mean you are being productive; or prolific.
Simply being busy will lead to burn out quite soon. And that’s not good, neither for your business nor for yourself.
Don’t blindly keep yourself busy. Focus on getting things done in a finite period of time; stop infinitely extending your “working” hours. I’ve put “working” in quotes because those are not the ideal working yours, but hours you sit in front of your computer browsing mindlessly, posting selfies in Facebook and watching cute cat videos.
If you focus on doing only things that matter for your business, you can strictly work on a schedule. This means you will have enough time to actually live your life (rather than sitting in front of the computer and convince yourself that you are working on your business!).
If you spend your time only on things that matter, you will have enough time to spend with your family, to have fun, to travel and to take good care of yourself.
#15 Work strategically
Don’t get caught up on tips and tricks. There is no magic button. Or a silver bullet. You cannot try out random stuff and expect consistent results.
Of course if you try out something new you will get a momentary result. That’s it.
If you do something consistently you will get result out of it. But what is the point?
As I said when I started out this post, you have to have clarity about what you want to get from your blogging business. And then plan and do things strategically.
Don’t just publish 3 posts a week just because one of your favourite bloggers is doing it. Don’t adopt a particular affiliate marketing strategy just because someone recommended it.
Integrate stuff to your business as needed. Don’t randomly do stuff with no reason just because someone recommended it.
If you approach things strategically, you can achieve results quite fast.
Bonus: #16 Don’t multi-task
Multi-tasking makes you feel proud because you are capable of handling more than one thing at a time. It makes you feel superior, doesn’t it? But it also kills you slowly; not literally, but quite close.
When you multi-task you brain switches gears - and it is not as fun as you switch gears in your car. This is dangerous.
When your brain moves from one task to the other, it breaks the current task, and then trains itself to choose and focus on the new task. And when you come back to the first task or move to another task from there, brain needs to switch one more time.
In particular, when you come back to the original task, your brain takes time to realise where you left off and it needs to collect the details back and actually come back to where it left off.
This takes quite some energy and surely does heat up your brain.
Focus on one thing at a time, get it done and move on to the other thing. Of course you can take breaks and say do one task for 20 mins and take up another task for the next 20 minutes. But don’t keep 5 tabs open and reply to email, while checking out Facebook while writing a blog post while watching TV - I hope you got my point.
Don’t think of multi-tasking as a skill or your own superior power to be able to handle many things! It is a dangerous thing indeed. Get rid of that one thing and you will see the difference!
Good habits to transform your blog this year!
So what good habit do you plan to take up this year? All these 15 good habits will help you take your blog to the next level. These will help you transform both your blog and your personal life.
Which of the above mentioned good habits will you take up first? Which of them is easy for you to implement? Let me know in the comments below!
Have a prosperous and successful year!
Jane,
#2 is my greatest takeaway.
As you said too much hard work and too little recognition can make any blogger go down. Self motivation or that self bouncing back up the wall is required all the time for a blogger to thrive.
Hey Sangeetha, you are right. If bloggers don’t bounce back they are sure to fail coz there are many moments of demotivation that come in the way for bloggers.
Dear Jane,
I have been blogging for 6 months now. Blogging is not an easy task. Agree with you on all points. I liked 12th point. Coz I implemented it. Have a wonderful year ahead!
Oh ya I get you Sree
I’m sure your action will be rewarded accordingly. Wishing you a wonderful 2015 
Jane Blogging is a full time job and like your article stated it is a business that need to be taken seriously. Good habit is the key .
Yup! If you treat blogging like business, your prospects will take you seriously! Thanks for stopping by Patrice.
I really like number 6. I think networking and learning what others are doing is very important. Also you make some good friends to build a support tribe.
I love networking Pat
Making friends never hurts, and it isn’t boring too!
These are awesome tips, number 9 is my take.
Happy New Year Jane
A great inspiring post for the bloggers asusual! No more good habits could exsist for the bloggers other than what you’ve specified
Having clear goals, positive thinking, networking with other bloggers & audience, spending quality time on daily basis, learning new skills, helping others (as much we can), facing challenges, working with unique style are some of the upright blogging practices and am familiar with most of them.
Doing one task at a time is most important to stay with more productivity. I’d insist every blogger to read this post to perform an enhanced blogging and thus sharing it on my network. Hats off to your great write-up, keep doing it forever
Happy (belated) New Year Nirmala
Having clarity and knowing what we would want to get from the work we put in is very important. Without that we might be wasting our time and energy.
Multi-tasking - I used to think I was being smart. But now I realize how wrong I was
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts
Hi Jane,
It is awesome and inspiring post. Thanks a lot for these lot of inspirations. Each and every point touch my heart and give me more lesions. As you said that be premium, I am totally agree with you, because if we find only cheap then it become our habit and we find only cheap everywhere.
Thanks again. Keep rocking!
Naveen
That’s right Naveen. You only get what you pay for. Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Jane.
Those are great points and can be worked on in that order.
In fact, I think #1 is the main one for me. I’ve been working hard on putting all of that on paper recently, and now #2 is more important than ever.
Thanks for the tips.
Nathan.
Yup! #1 and #2 are certainly important and bloggers should be aware of these two principles right from the start!
Hello Jane,
hope you are doing well, your writing skill, i must say wow!
Actually in some blogs just i want to go for catchy headlines and highlights but i suddenly stuck in your blog! keep rocking!!!!
Great post Jane! I like point number 13* (maintain a premium standard)
Jane your very own blog feels upscale in terms of arrangement, colors and overall legibility. It’s nice that you are walking the talk and I’d like to follow your example in everything I do this year.
I really started to realize the importance of going premium very late in my business. Glad to know it works! Thanks Shingi
Hi Jane,
First of all “A VERY HAPPY & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR WISHES”
Awesome & inspiring article. I have published my consultancy website recently. To my opinion all the 15+1 are important. To be precise I go for 6th and 10th one. Especially I want to keep at the negativity. Often it kills our ultimate goal/aim.
Thanks & expecting more from you.
Thank God I found your blog! I am starting a new website and your input is very helpful. Thanks for sharing!
“Never Give Up” and “Keep Learning” are the two most good habit for every blogger and i am sure every blogger will agree with this.
Happy New Year Jane, amazing tips to kick start the new year for sure, I loved them all. The stand out points for me personally are number 7 and number 9. This year I plan to be totally focused on community building and being a greater man of value lol.
I also want to share some tips to your first point, having a clear vision or a clear aim as to what you want to achieve. If you want to reach your goals this year, Jane is right, you have to know what it is you want to achieve clearly, if your mind is scattered or you’re not really sure what you want, you might as well forget it right now, because you’ll end the year once again not really achieving what you thought you’d achieve.
Sit down with a pen and paper and write down everything you want to achieve this year, absolutely everything, be it a personal goal or a business goal, then pick out the ones you think you’re closest to reaching, then pick out just one that you can immediately take action upon to reaching first, it works for me, I’m positive it’ll work for you too.
Happy New Year everyone.
Great article Jane..:) I am going to implement few of above above attributes which have never followed like i will avoid multi task, work strategically, It is really important plan some strategy and work on that strategy.
creating network and building connection really helps guys, and keep positive most of the time.
Thanks jane. I would like to read your some more post on different and new topics
#2 is very important. You will not get 1000’s or even 100’s of readers / subscribers in the first month. You have to stay persistent and deploy all other means of promoting your blog to eventually attract those numbers. Giving up too early means walking away from t he eventual success.
Your post is a great inspiration for everyone who wants to become popular as a blogger and create quite an impact there and I found these tips easy to apply so definitely gonna take advantage of what I have just learned.
Hey, regarding multitask, you’re right it’s a damn of a challenge and it makes you proud, but i don’t want agree it would kill you slowly unless it’s scientifically proved, it should just improve your habits imo
I personally, spend a lot of time on planning at the end of previous year. This is the first time, I have set several different stages of my blogging strategy in 2015, as well as realistic goals.
A very Happy New Year to you Jane.
You are right many people spend the whole month of January while just thinking what to do and what to skip.
Clarity of vision is most important. Obviously the ultimate objective of every one is to make his life comfortable and joyful but how to achieve this goal is the heck of the task.
It is rightly said that those who get successful in their life actually find their correct niche and put themselves without caring of result. So success is naturaly their ultimate pie.
It is good to read a very passion igniting post at the start of the year that will be a guiding beacon for me to make this year more successful and memorable.
Thanks for sharing
Jane,
Great tips here to rock in 2015. I liked the ‘premium’ tip the most. I believe investing in building a brand never goes waste !
Thanks for this post it’s really helpfull. I recognize myself, i always work on many project when i should concentrate on 1 each at the time, i think i need a better organisation
Success
Hi
I just started my first blog, hope it will rock.
But in only 10 years.
Reason is simple that I m not generating content daily.
But I will try my best.
Your blog is so informative, I use my all spare time to read old posts of your blog.
You can check my little (child) blog to give me suggestions.
I will wait for your feedback.
Hi Jane,
Starting a blog is initial step for becoming successful blogger. But it’s not necessary that every newly started blog can achieve a big success.
Any business whether it is small or big it needs planning, dedication and consistent work to achieve target or success in any business.
Your all mentioned points are really motivating and will help a lot to everyone if they follow it seriously.
Thanks for sharing such motivational article.
Happy and prosperous new year! Have a great day ahead!
>SK Lohar
Hi Jane,
What excellent advice! I love all of them but my favorite is keep open and keep learning. That’s the key … learning.
We do have to spend part of every day learning in order to achieve whatever our goals are. And with learning comes applying. We can learn so much, but we need to take it in chunks and then immediately apply something we did learn. I find this so effective.
-Donna