Life Coaches Blog

‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from her?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

‘I don’t much care where…’ said Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

Why be a problogger at all?

Before beginning anything, begin with the end in mind. So what is my dream for starting a personal development blog in the first place?

The answer is threefold:

1) From the blogging perspective, to create kick-ass original and unique content that makes a positive difference in a significant number of people’s lives.

2) From the business perspective, to create such a massive amount of income that I can quit my full-time job to work wherever and whenever I want.

3) From the lifestyle perspective, to minimize the amount of time I spend working and maximize my profits from it.

Timothy Ferriss’ the New Rich

I like Timothy Ferriss’ definition of the New Rich in his must-read book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

From chapter 1; the New Rich prefer to have others work for them, to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect, to distribute recovery periods and adventures throughout life instead of retire, to do all the things they want to do, to be the owner instead of the boss, to make money with specific reasons, to have more quality and less clutter, to ensure payday comes every day and to have the freedom to pursue their dreams.

If I can make enough profits from problogging for example, I can choose to blog from Japan while training in the home dojos of the Bujinkan martial arts which I study. That is the dream – as Timothy Ferriss puts it – to have mobility work for me instead of me working for mobility.

The Biggest Weakness of Problogging

The biggest weakness of using problogging as a method to realize the dream of minimizing effort and maximizing profit is that problogging isn’t passive income.

Passive income is cash that flows into your pocket whether you’re working or not. While your blog does continue to make you money while you’re away from it, you still have to sit down and generate regular amounts of content.

Like the wisest men in the kingdom said: there ain’t no free lunch.

The paradox lies between living a life vs. writing about it. I’ve become so busy on my weekdays that it’s tough blocking time out to write and the output is slow. I’m now writing most of my entries during the weekends to post during the weekdays (this post is being written on a Saturday evening).

The Best Thing about Problogging

My self-made millionaire friend Adam Khoo taught me this formula in his course Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires. In 4 words, it makes the process of making profits crystal-clear:

Income = Value x Time x Scalability

To provide content regularly on a blog takes time, so it’s obvious the only way to minimize effort and maximize income is to massively increase the value and scale. The best thing about problogging is that your content is easily scalable; it’s online content and your audience is the entire online world.

Is Problogging Still a Good Way to Make Profits?

If problogging doesn’t turn in a bigger profit than my day job, then it’s nothing more than another job with additional responsibilities. Since I have to keep putting in time and effort, it can only work if the return on investment on my time and effort is worth more than a few dollars.

The good thing about problogging is that the entry barrier and costs are low. The challenge then is to create a blog that generates massive value and has massive traffic with intelligent ways to profit from it.

Why Do I Still Want to Blog?

Why then do I still want to blog?

1) It seems to fit into my goal of minimizing effort and maximizing profit. With a potential audience of the entire world, it’s definitely more scalable than my employed day job.

2) I still love writing, and I still love personal development. A problog about personal development seems a perfect fit.