START BLOGGING! — THE DIARY OF A BEGINNER BLOGGER

Being uncommon is what I do. When I first wanted to start blogging, I got hit by the overwhelming sea of information out there. Although it is fun at first, it becomes tiring after a relatively short period of time. That is why this diary was created. I chose to dedicate a page all about the process of starting my first personal website. It features some of my best tips and trick, all the issues that I faced and a wide range of resources you will definitely need.

Day 0 — Preparations

Writing in retrospective it has been quite eventful 2 and so months. I actually got an idea about my own website/blog years back and it came with my idea that I wanted to express myself in words. You see, as a young entrepreneur I have always had views (read: perspectives) on the things in business and life I experienced — but the views seemed different than the ones around me. The first post came on the 20th of May and was published on LinkedIn’s publishing platform Pulse. The reason why I choose this platform was because I was fairly familiar with LinkedIn and had developed a decent network to “test” my new content. The post “Is there ANYTHING good after closing your first start-up before 25?” has so far had almost 160 views and 20 likes. The second one “May the vision be with you” has had 75 views (you can also read them here).

But the lesson was more about myself — what I really wanted to write about and contribute to the World. So far I have not found the answer and continued to look for it as a piled my Google Keep lists with writing ideas.

Being an entrepreneur, I had to research the online workplace before I could undertake anything. This included contacting one of my closest friend and personal e-commerce mentor Slavko and doing a LOOOOT of reading on any Internet subject I could think of. The guide he has written was crucial in my jump-start: “Complete Beginner’s Guide To Online Businesses” (more thoughts to follow). The process lasted for around 3 weeks and somehow my Internet purpose started to form. I would help people make their ideas a reality! It wasn’t an eureka moment, but rather a combination of all the new info form my closest friends and internet sources and my personal experience that a large quantity of people I have met do have great ideas, but lack in execution — or at least giving them a shot. FINALLY MY PURPOSE!

Some technical bits followed — choose hosting, learn how to set up a website, learn the basics of coding, SEO and Internet marketing. Not that I have any real monetization incentives, but just from curiosity. Details will be shown i future days as I try to implement what I have read.

Oh, I almost forgot — during the whole month or two processes, I struggled with the domain name. And it seemed to go in sync with my writing ideas — Ideagyzer came as a result of my purpose and couldn’t be happier.

Success!!!

Day 1

Woke up that day and realized it was time for action! I would not dwell on the details any more! I was ready to have my mind blown and get crushed in something I had no idea about. Came back from work and…….

The only tab that remained constant on my browser for the whole day was Websitesetup.org guide: How to make a website. It guided my though the process in a level of detail which I liked — not too much but enough to get the site going. Follow the steps I took that day:

1. Choose a platform — I went with WordPress because I had used it before on occasions and knew it was simple. It is a primarily a blogger platform but can be easily tweaked to make a nice website. Remember that you can always migrate to other platforms if you feel so.
2. Setup domain, hosting and email — actually spent a lot of time on this, which now I see is irrelevant in the beginning because you will not need “unlimited traffic” or “unlimited storage”. Nobody will visit yours site because no one will know about you. That is why i settled for a basic local one, which was twice as cheap as, say Hostgator or Bluehost. What I needed the most was 1 click install for WordPress (the platform I already set my mind on).
3. Setup the site — used the 1 click setup and there it was! In the following hour I went through every menu button and read the “help” headline about it. Soon I had some image in my head of what the possibilities were. A feature that I first worked with was the themes. Actually a whole 10+ themes in that hour and none fit to my likes. But looking at it now it seems you cannot find a 100% suitable one, but rather find an easy base to tweak in the future. The second feature i exploited was the plugins. Immediately i installed theYoast SEO Every source I read said that you have to start SEO from the beginning — so I did the easiest way possible to me. Read the tutorial but left the optimization for another day. The second plugin I put was Newsletter together with Formget Contact Form because once again I read that you are supposed to build your email list from the start because an email list is one of the biggest assets you will have. Put a basic form on the right but did not have further fun with it that day. The last plugin was the Google Analytics one — I love data and had to have insider knowledge from the first hour. That day Ideagyzer had 260 pageviews.
4. Inserted my content — i had 2 basic posts from LinkedIn and pasted them there.
5. Told some of my closest friends and family I was starting Ideagyzer and got some motivation and reassurance from them.
6. Made a basic About Me page with a pasted text from my LinkedIn summary — will definitely change in the future.

At the end I felt very tired and decided to call it a day. Reflecting on what was quite an eventful one, few tips come to my mind:

• Just start as soon as possible — do not dwell on details
• Make it as easy as possible for yourself by not trying to do too much
• Be prepared to enter a new area which you have no knowledge about and spent a lot of hours just trying to make some sense
• Ask Google whatever you want — it WILL answer!
• Insert something just for fun — you have no visitors!

Day 2

Waking up with a new project on mind felt nice. Spent most of my workday doing my tasks, but having thoughts about the website. Coming home I immediately jumped on the WordPress platform and worked on design. I learned how to setup menus, pages, tags and categories. During the process I referred to a lot of external resources. Yet all the questions I had I simply asked Google — it answered every time! — Perfect!

Out of my writing ideas list (which I keep on Keep) I wrote a small post about my personal guide quote. It took me very little time because I was happy to express myself and write about things I loved. It came out nice, sent it to friends and they thought so too. One even gave me the courtesy of commenting on the post. But somehow I felt it is short — we will see.

That night I started to learn a bit about coding because I had a real problem — some things that I wanted to add to the site did not come in plugins, or did not meet my personal demands. I could find the code on the WordPress forum but did not know where to put it. It all seemed the same. Went to Codeacademy and enrolled in a 4 hour course in PHP. Started to learn but had too much info for that day.

Things I thought about:

• Website design
• Ideagyzer branding
• Should I spread the word among my network or not?
• SEO

Number of pageviews: 155

Day 3

Reading blogs like Pat’s, Tim’s and Seth’s, made me think of developing a content strategy. How would you complete your goals if you had none defined? So I put a mediocre goal of writing at least 1000 words everyday, until I gave created at least 40.000 words. Then I would focus more on promoting my content — lets hope this does happen.

Having a goal meant that I had to do something. That is how I pushed myself to look at my writing ideas list and pick a title. I wrote the “Success Bubble” article and it turned out nice. Even got a comment (from a friend) but STILL A COMMENT! Although it did not have the word count as per my goal, I felt good to complete the daily achievement.

Yesterday I thought of SEO and started to fill out the forms, which are inside Yoast SEO plugin I installed. It is hard. Keywords, tags, metas, and other bla bla bla (at least for now). The plugin shows me how good each page is by assigning colors, from red to green — bad to excellent SEO. All are red so far, but I am learning. Another goal for tomorrow — get one green page!

Tip of the day: Set clear and measurable goals.

Day 5

Yesterdays goal was came first today! Got one green light on the SEO plugin. But what really happened was the idea to write a diary. Somehow it seems natural to write down all the new things I learn today, the challenges I face and what my thinking process is. I hope it will be a nice reflection of the past when I read it sometime in the longer future.

Made a decision to do the diary and started to recall the last days because I had to fill it up til present day — lucky for me my site is only 3 days old :). The interesting part was looking back on things which I did only days ago. Today I could have done them differently. Not just that, I wouldn’t have wasted time or made a bigger impact. Knowing myself, I did not judge my actions but rather saw them as essential in my growth as a wannabe blogger.

Another interesting thing is that just by comparing yesterday to today, you will se how much more you know and look to something new you can do. Have not realized this before and it seems to motivate me. Imagine what I could do in a month, few months, or year or two. Same can be said for yourself. What my regret today is the days spent thinking of action and going over the details. I would have learned a LOT more just by trying and making mistakes. Lesson learned!

The day ended with my idea to change the layout of the site. Maybe I should invest more time in the about me page and put it as a home page? Then people would get to know me, what I stand for, and the things I can do for them. Maybe I will write a summary of the website too.

Tomorrow is a new day.

My thoughts:

• Logo design
• Getting more green SEO pages
• Should I start sharing the site?
• What to write about

Total pageviews: 104

Day 6

Today is the day the real Ideagyzer purpose begins to happen. I have begun to write the Ultimate Guide for evaluating business ideas. Why not make the best guide possible and give it for free — how many people would find that beneficial? Got to do it!

My thinking process behind the guide introduction is to get as much info as possible. First I began with what I already know — having a business background I have used a lot of such tools to evaluate different business ideas. I wrote them all down but it would not achieve anything if I used only that. So the next step came to doing around 3 hours of research on the topic and variations of it. Got a lot of info, which I will go through in the next days. Nothing beats a good read.

The reading process includes taking in depth notes and remarks on any info I think should be inside the guide. Reading and thinking seems to do another good thing for me — it starts to form a clearer picture of how the guide will look like and how the content will be divided. Things are coming together nice — at least in my mind and a bit on Keep.

Managed to write the intro and get a basic table of contents drafted.

Today I also did something for the first time — shared Ideagyzer on my LinkedIn network. NO EFFECT so far! Traffic sources show only 2 referrals although I have a network of more than 600 connections. It got me thinking — why not write an article to present Ideagyzer to my connections? Will continue to think about that in the days to come.

Looked at the following sites:

Top 10 most important things to do after installing WordPress– I did most of the things and will see the impact in the future

How to start a blog — A complete beginner’s guide– it is very informative and detailed. Will definitely use all the ideas in near future.

Number of pageviews: 54

Day 10

The weekend has not been productive at all. Giving up on caffeine in the past week makes me sleepy. I can’t seem to get my thoughts going and provide really good stuff for the guide. So I have gone with the tide and decided to rest.

Interestingly, there seems to be a connection between the productivity and the surrounding I am in. Most of the content has been created in a quite setting, all alone. When I am around others, or even with the TV on, productivity drops significantly. One solution might be to make a personal workspace — a workroom. My apartment has an empty room, which might just do me a favor to provide better stuff for my readers. It is only natural for me to read a few articles on how to organize your private space. Maybe I’ll write an article too.

Design wise, I justified every text on Ideagyzer — looks a lot more professional.

Number of pageviews: 58

Day 11

After I accomplished my writing goal for the day (1000 words) as part of the Ultimate Guide (no further info — you will see), I turned to one of my thoughts from the other days. To create a logo is crucial for branding purposes but for me it gives sort of an identity to the company. When I started my company (MEO) one of the first things I did was exactly that. Went with all the best design that was available, printed the best business cards and so on. Today’s challenge is that there is no budget to project such costs. Now real creativity steps in.

Did a bit of research — it turns out there a quite a few sites out there that help you create a logo in no time. Lets face it, it is simple but it does the job in the beginning. Let me list some:

• Logoyes.com
• Designmantic.com
• Graphicsprings.com
• Squarespace.com — my choice

Drumroll:

Still don’t know what to think of it but so far it looks awesome — for the amount of time invested (around 3 minutes). But this is when the hard part came and I learned a hard lesson. Fitting a logo on a theme is quite the job. Although the theme Ideagzyer is using (Virtue) does have the option to attach a logo on the header, fitting it is something else. As you can see by now, there is no logo on Ideagyzer because I have yet to find a solution. So my tip is to have this in mind when choosing a template, especially if you do not know ANY code. Keep you updated on what happens next.

Today was the day Ideagyzer got only 6 users but 101 page views.

Tip of the day: setup Google Analytics so it does not count your visits as part of the data pile. Check out these 4 articles

• Don’t Track Yourself: How to Block Yourself from Google Analytics
• Exclude Yourself and Others from Google Analytics Data: 5 Ways to Do It
• The Best Way to Exclude Yourself From Google Analytics Data
• TUTORIAL: Filtering Yourself from Google Analytics

The reason for such tweaking is because I spent quite some time on Ideagyzer. It has an effect on the data by some margin and having little visitors only increases my effect. At the end I went with the Chrome extension developed by Google — Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on

Day 12

I am sort of confused. Everything I have done up to this day, not only with Ideagyzer, but with any other venture, has been based on me learning and reading. Thus doing the same with Ideagyzer seems to make me even more confused. As my article about the “Success Bubble” reads, I may too be becoming part of that bubble. Too much info is out there about the Internet scene, how to be better, how to reach more people, how to do this, that. Sort of, my consciousness is fighting — I know that I should take everything with a pinch of salt, but I know very little about the Internet details that it is hard not to. Coming from a physical business looks to have taken a toll on me.

But I fight it the only way I know how — take more action! So today I did exactly that:

First I wrote a new post that was a draft for some time, tweaked it a bit and published it. It took me only 5 minutes to get a green light on the SEO plugin (it used to be 15–20) which can only mean I am learning. Continued the day by sharing the content on my LinkedIn network and once again got 0 views from there. One thing I had an issue with was adding graphics to the post. My Photoshop and Corel experience do come in handy but my time is limited and currently am unable to get into graphic design. Instead Google came in handy and choosing a generic graphic was easy. I don not plan to take this strategy on a long term because my thinking is always to have the best graphics possible. Good looks tend to increase the impact and significance.

The second thing today was creating a Twitter profile for Ideagyzer.com. The Infographic by Nubspot states that social media presence was crucial to get readers. Buffersocial’s post on how to get the first 1000 followers seemed logical. Update the profile, add bio, follow suggested people, follow people in your niche, tweet and hope. Tweeted a few of the articles and got followed by almost 20 people. Another related thing was the Twitter widget I added to Ideagyzer — Easy Twitter Feed Widget. Very easy to setup just by following instructions and seems to do the job.

Ideagyzer had 52 page views from 48 users and none from Twitter.

Day 14

I continue to write my big guide with somewhat steady pace. My opinion is that writing a bigger post does a lot of good things for me. It improves my writing style and it makes me develop a routine. The routine is essential to deliver regular content and to make writing more than just something that you do when you have inspiration. It sort of makes writing a regular output. But before this came to my mind I looked at the following compilation of posts about Famous Writers on Writing, this article about Writing Lessons, Conquering Writing Blocks and Writing Rules.

What I also recognised is that writing online content somewhat differs from conventional writing. It is more customised and far less formative (not that there are no posts out here with these characteristics). That is why I continued my day reading any blog post that I liked — it did not have to be with related content, but it is an experiment to see if it has any effect. The daily goal is to read at least 10 posts by other authors in any field. Let us reflect sometime in the future.

Tip of the day: consider writing as something which you can do daily.

Day 16

Vacation time! At least for the weekend. Doing so many things at the same time drains me psychologically. But it also reduces my vacation time way below average. When I think about it there is a lot to do with productivity. Sometimes I find myself staring at the monitor with no idea what to do or write. Than I say, OK maybe I am tired. Once the rest is over, jobs get done a lot easer.

Today I also looked at the analytics. They are starting to make some sense:

• Ideagyzer is getting a steady stream of around 50–70 visitors per day
• Demographics include the USA mostly.
• Average session is 2 minutes long
• Bounce rate is 78%

Some of the numbers are encouraging but most are not. I have been sharing the blog content on Twitter, LinkedIn, personal e-mail and mouth to mouth. But 80% of the traffic is referral, 8% is direct, 4% is social and the rest is organic search. The referrals come for Floating Share Buttons, which to be completely honest, I have no idea what it means. All I know is that it is a plugin I use to have the social sharing buttons on the left of the page. Some encouragement is the Twitter feedback. Got around 40 followers, 1 retweet and a reply.

An interesting thing I see on Twitter are private messages that were sent to me after I followed someone. They contained some basic thank you note or even a link to a post/e-book/website. Maybe I will do the same. Just have to see what is the outcome of my vacation.

Day 20

Its is all about my personal writing sanctuary. As I sad before, I feel the need for a place to write and be productive. That is exactly what I did. Few hours around the house and the sanctuary begins to come to life. But this is it for now because I will be writing a special post about it, so stay tuned.

Day 22

Vacationing a bit has been nice. Clearing the mind on the other hand has been harder. Doing so many things at once somehow clouds my thoughts and as I previously wrote, makes me a lot less productive. A day job, creating a website, exploring new business opportunities has taken its toll on me. But achieving means shutting up and pushing on no matter what. Exactly that mindset started this Monday. What would I do today if I had no fear?

Full of energy and a somewhat clear mind made working on Ideagyzer fun. First I drafted two titles about the next posts. One is going to be about the fear and how it clouds their success and the second one about creating the optimal place for being productive at home. Wrote quite a number of words. They seemed to be coming out easily. Must be the rest! In the process I read some daily articles (as part of my 10 post per day reading strategy) which included: 6 Powerful Questions That Will Change Your Life Forever — getting into spiritual mode — very insightful and How to create an online business for beginners that works — very cool post about methods in online business creation that actually work.

Next things on the list were technical bits. Ideagyzer has been getting referrals from sources I do not know of but that are related to the SumoMe platform. So far it only had one plugin — the floating buttons plugin. In the next hour or so I spent time researching the other tools that they provided and ended up with some cool plugins (and hopefully traffic) — Contact Form lets you create a contact page where visitors can write to you. The interesting thing was the level of customisation, which although I had a free version, was quite extensive. I went with the pop up contact form at the bottom of Ideagyzer and setup my Ideagyzer e-mail to receive the forms. Another plugin I installed was the List Builder. It is an e-mail collection tool which lets you create a form, customise it and place it on your site. Additionally in the free version it gives you basic feedback of some data, such as number of daily subscriptions. A good bit is that it has the option to export the e-mail list as a .csv format and put it in any newsletter platform further on. The actual form can be also tweaked. There is the option for it to be fixed or to be a pop up. I went with the pop up because it looked cooler and set up the timing as active (it pops up differently per visitor behaviour). There is even a statistic of the number of pop ups and the conversion to an e-mail.

I went further as to create a MailChimp account but have yet to check out the features.

Because I removed the old e-mail widget on the primary sidebar I had to fill the space. I read some articles about the coolest widgets for WordPress and chose Quotes Collection. Very simple to setup and fill up with quotes. Went with some I already knew and found some more on the net. So far there are 24.

Finally I looked at Analytics. Page views were 24 and visitors 23, 100% as new. But the pattern is that most are from the USA so Ideagyzer had traffic around 11–12 o’clock in the AM. The other visitors were from China and the UK.

Day 23

Got an idea to write a new post. I am getting some more ideas and I think it is because of my professional sanctuary. Now delivery is easier and more fun. This made me write a post about “Creating your Professional Sanctuary“. It only took less than 30 minutes to write. Then shared it on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The most important part of the day was sending the first ever Ideagyzer newsletter. Although the database has only 3 e-mail I had to give it a try. The Newsletter plugin that I installed on the first day of Ideagyzer finally came to life. First I gathered some info:

• How to create an email newsletter people actually read
• How to create an email newsletter (checklist)
• 15 Email Newsletter Examples We Love Getting in Our Inboxes
• 7 Golden Steps to Creating an Effective Email Newsletter
• 20 tips for great email newsletter design

After I gathered my thoughts I went on with creating the design template. Newsletter has some basic designs to choose from. The text included a basic thank you, a reminder of the vision of Ideagyzer, the newest post and the link to The Diary of a Beginner Blogger you are reading. This is the design:

View this email online

Hello

This is the first newsletter out of Ideagyzer.com. We are

extremely happy to share this with you and to remind

you of our purpose. Ideagyzer’s vision is to become a

bank of tools to help our readers achieve their ideas.

Now please feel free to check out our latest post:

Creating a Professional Sanctuary

Be sure to daily follow The Diary of a Beginner Blogger and

witness our growth.

Thank you,

Dane

Ideagyzer

To change your subscription, click here.

Very basic, but I like it a lot. The sending was easy since there are only 3 subscribers.

Twitter came next. Some new tweets about the new post and reminders to read the new entries in The Diary of a Beginner Blogger. A pattern which is emerging are private messages. I seem to be getting a lot of info through them, such as a thank you note for the follow or additional links to get e-books or courses. The whole thing looks very personal so I am thinking of doing it today. In what form I have yet to think of.

Cool posts I read today:

• These 10 Peter Drucker Quotes May Change Your World
• 60+ Beautiful Logo Design Tutorials And Resources
• 30 Best Photoshop Logo Design Tutorials
• My June 2015 Monthly Income Report
• How to Turn Empty Pepsi Cans Into a Back to the Future DeLorean
• How Snapchat Landed Me a Job

Number of page views: 44. Number of users: 19

Day 25

A very fun day indeed! First of all did some changes in the newsletter subscription forms. As I did few days ago — made a pop-up form from SumoMe, but got poor statistics. Then i changed the pop-up times (both shorter and longer) but got even worse ones. Logically this needed to change. The solution — install a Slider plugin from SumoMe. Now it is set to 25% (once the scrolling reaches one quarter of the page). Also did changes to the text. Since Ideagyzer is all about helping the users achieve their ideas I made changes to the text and got this design:

Next I got into some more engaging on Twitter with this outcome: few retweets and about 20 new followers. But the reason behind this goes back to basics of every business: share with influential people. My friend has been working on the Net for some time and I simply asked for suggestions and improvements. First he gave me the idea to change the newsletter box (I did earlier) and he tweeted two articles.

Finally I installed a Smart Bar from SumoMe on the top of every page to promote this Diary. So far have had steady visits.

I have had a Quora profile for some time. It is very fun to read, but have not done any engagement. Today I spent half an hour giving answers to questions (even got upvotes) with the idea that my niche does use this network a lot.

The end of the day was crowned with the most traffic from the beginning: 82 users and 110 page views!

Links of the day:

• 8 Steps to Getting What You Want… Without Formal Credentials
• Do We Need A New Word For Entrepreneur?
• 10 “Content Upgrade” Ideas to Get More Subscribers, Leads and Sales
• Case Study: How I Turned Autocomplete Ideas into Traffic & Ranking Results with Only 5 Hours of Effort

Tip of the day: be ready to change and adapt

Day 26

For some time I have been thinking of changing the design. Not only because of me, but I have had feedback too. Today I begun the search for a theme which I like. Of course Google is always on hand and that is where the search started. This are the resources:

• The 40 best free WordPress themes
• 23+ Of The Best WordPress Personal Blog Themes
• 30 Free Smashing WordPress Themes For Personal Bloggers
• 38 Free Responsive WordPress Themes
• 36 Best and Free Responsive Photography WordPress Themes
• 37 Simple WordPress Themes You Should Try

After going thought them and downloading a large majority of the themes I came to a conclusion. Before you go into a changing the design please consider what you actually want. Before we go further, I have created a list of things to consider before going after a new design:

• Type of website?
• Special features you need?
• Have you found a similar website design?
• Are you ready to pay? If so, how much?

Why these questions? Because it made my life easy. The links above (and I am sure there are a lot more) have themes for any taste. But I wasted so much time checking the ones I liked just by visual reference and once I installed a demo, I would realise it lacked something.

Ideagyzer went though the checklist and it made my life easier. It is a personal blog/website, which should focus on content and basic graphics, there were few sites which looked nice as a benchmark and I am still not ready to pay. Somehow I still feel that there is a lot to learn for me to set my goals straight and ask for the development of a new design. If today I went with such a case, what would I do if I did not like it in some time?

Today’s experience taught me that a process of finding the right design can take time so in the end after 15 tries I went back to the basic Ideagyzer design. Another tip is to create a backup of the whole website before you do such dramatic changes. For this I used my cPanel log in and used the tool there. Just follow the instructions on your panel too.

Some cool articles for today:

• 11 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My First Blog
• How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend (Examples: AppSumo, Mint, Chihuahuas)

Day 28

Design day — vol. 2. The search continued for the right theme. If you remember that yesterday I backed up Ideagyzer with the help of the cPanel, today I did something else. Actually at the end of the day the whole file was eventually uploaded to Dropbox manually. What I found out is that there is a tool for the job — Wordress Backup to Dropbox plugin. How did I not think of this before? It is very easy to use and you could schedule regular backups. Just have in mind that it takes at least 30 minutes and it is not recommended for the process to be stopped at any time. So do it on a steady connection and make sure to keep it running. Ideagyzer’s backup is only 85mb so space on Dropbox is not an issue.

First I check out the Beginner’s Guide to Selecting a WordPress Theme, but mostly got info that I already found out for myself yesterday. One thing that caught my mind was security. I did not know you are suppose to take advanced care of security. Does not that come with WordPress and the hosting itself?

Just be sure went with Sucuri plugin, which is supposed to be the best out there. Installed it and set it up with the help of this article. So far so good.

Now I went back to design. It came down to Tracks or MH Cicero Lite. Somehow the first one was too dark and the choice was made on the second. But now the hard part came. I did not realise that all plugins and widgets would have to be setup all over again. Plus some widgets did not look good any more! The whole process took me around 3 hours. It included adjusting all widgets, plugins and tweaking the features of the theme. Despite the fact that I got the free version (there is a paid version of the theme too) it still has cool functions. Some of which I did not have time for today.

Tip of the day: take more time than you plan on changing the design of your blog/website

Finally for today I implemented something I had read in many guides and posts shown throughout this Diary — develop social presence where your niche hangs out! In addition to Twitter with 94 followers, Quora looks to be the place for me. For those who do not know, it is a social network for answering questions. But the good thing is that there are a lot of fields such as startups, entrepreneurship, innovation and others. Cool to have presence there. I answered few questions and posted one too. So far have got more than 1000 views. But how can I capitalise on this — my personal profile on Quora is up to date. It includes links to Ideagyzer and Twitter and my bio. We have yet to see the real impact.

Number of visitors: 38. Number of page views: 47.

Day 29

During the weekend I got into reading the Social Triggers blog. It was referenced to me by a friend in the online marketing sector. The website uses psychology to help people get more traffic on their website. There is an excellent e-book — How to get Your First 5000 Subscribers. It is focused on a strategy of redefining yourself and what you stand for. After going though it couple of times I decided to redefine the About page.

Many times before I have said that the purpose of Ideagyzer is to help people make their ideas a reality. So with the help of a checklist inside the e-book I came up with:

My life path has taught me that every person has at least one excellent idea. Most do not know what they have or what to do with it. Ideagyzer is here to make their ideas a reality by giving them real proven methods of evaluating and implementing ideas. Bonus: share my perspective on business concepts and success.

Now my vision sounds a lot more concise and to the point. The whole process lead to one conclusion. If you want to become successful (depending on what your goals are) you would have to create a clear perspective of yourself. What do you stand for? What can you do to help? What is your ultimate goal? Answering these questions does help a lot when you do not have a clear path for your blog. But do not be hard on yourself because you are just getting started.

The last thing of the day was rethinking the layout of Ideagyzer. I can see that most successful websites start of with the About page. It is all about establishing credibility early on. In the next I will be doing research into such layouts and spill the insights with you.

Day 30

Recently have been lacking a bit of time and motivation to work on Ideagyzer. It is not that I do not want to, but more of the fact that daily professional activities have been taking over too much of my energy. So at the end of the day there is no motivation to do anything with Ideagyzer. Today I only made adjustments to the newsletter form slider. First I installed the Content Analysis Tool by SumoMe. It is a tool which measures activity on you page. It shows the average amount of scrolling on any page/post. Accordingly I adjusted the newsletter popup to a bit less than the average. The result: now I have more popups

In previous days I have been having some issues with the traffic. Going though it I somehow see things which do not match. What is the issue I have yet to see and share, but it definitely is an issue.

The End

This is where I stop with my diary. It’s goal has been accomplished. Looking forward to hearing your feedback and comments, as well as wishing you the best of luck in starting your blog.

Please make sure to provide your feedback in the comments below and give as much claps as you want. Follow me and visit DANETODOROVSKI.COM for more on topics related to entrepreneurship and success.