Refine Your Message

Have you ever sat down to write, only to stare blankly at computer screen with no idea of what to write about? Yep, me too! In fact, I’d dare to bet that even the most prolific writers among us have dealt with mental blocks at one point or the other. We all get to a point sometimes — especially if we’ve been expending a lot of creative energy — where we’re just completely tapped out. Maybe you’ve cranked out a lot of content lately, or you just finished working on a big project or a new course. Or maybe you’re new to blogging and just have no idea where to start. Whatever the reason, that tapped-out feeling of not being able to come up withRead More

Do you know who you are writing to? I mean, do you really KNOW? If you close your eyes and imagine your reader, who do you see? Is it a clear picture of a person you know well, a friend you know as intimately as you know yourself? Or is it more nebulous? A fuzzy approximation of who you think your audience might be? One of the most common fears I hear from our Elite Blog Academy students is the worry that if you zero in on your audience and get too focused on whom you’re targeting, you’ll alienate your readers. On one level, this fear makes sense. Isn’t it smart to appeal to as many people as you possibly can? Shouldn’t we broaden ourRead More

I would love to tell you that I had a plan from day one of my blogging career. That all my content was completely organized in a well thought-out, strategic editorial calendar. But that would be a lie. You see, when I first started, my “editorial calendar” consisted of whatever struck my fancy at any particular moment. I pretty much I wrote what I wanted, when I wanted, with no real thought of how it fit into the overall picture of my blog. It was all footloose and fancy free. In fact, I didn’t even really have a posting schedule. I would get an idea, think “Hmm… maybe I should write that down!”, and that would be about it, especially since in those days mostRead More

Has there ever been a time in your blogging career when you felt like a fraud? Like you were pulling the wool over your readers’ eyes? And if they could only see the REAL you, they would know you were a fake and run in the opposite direction? It actually has a name–it’s called “Impostor Syndrome.” Wikipedia refers to impostor syndrome as “a concept describing high-achieving individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a ‘fraud’”. Sound familiar? And I have a confession to make–I struggle with this all the time! Most people assume I started my own blog Living Well Spending Less because I’m an expert on money. But the opposite is true. IRead More

As the old saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. And, in the world of blogging, you don’t have very long to make that impression. Don’t believe me? Consider the facts. Most new visitors to your website will stay less than a minute. In fact, according to Hubspot study, more than half of website visitors will only stay on your site for less than 15 seconds. Yikes. But what that really means is that when someone visits your blog, you only have a few seconds to convince them they’ve landed in the right place and should give the rest of your content a shot. Oh, the pressure. So how do you do that? Well, you start by putting yourself inRead More

Elite Blog Academy first launched in 2014 to fill a basic need–to give bloggers who were feeling totally overwhelmed a clear, straightforward path to success.  Over and over, I had the bloggers that I was working with one-on-one tell me, “can you please just tell me, step-by-step, exactly what I have to do to be successful?” And so, EBA was born and our simple 4-part framework walked you through, step-by-step, the process of creating a successful, profitable blog. Since then we’ve enrolled more than 3,000 members and we’ve had a front row seat to thousands of incredible transformations.  We’ve watched our members be able to quit their jobs, support their families, create non-profits, write bestselling books, launch products, be featured in national magazines and on every majorRead More