Build Your Webisite Like It's Your Job!

The number one post in the top-10 right now is Kyle's blog "If I Work At This 8 Hours Per Day". In this post Kyle explains that success of your website depends on only one person -- you!

Apprentice

This really hit home with me and validated the approach I'm trying to take. The way I've been looking at this journey is that it's a part-time job that won't pay me until I've proven myself. There's a bit of an apprenticeship that must be completed first.

The WA community is our collective mentor. We have all the resources available to us -- all the training, all the experienced experts who have made this work, all the tools, and the beginnings of a pretty vast professional network. How fast we advance through our apprenticeship is really up to us.

Dedication

I'm sure there are many, many paths to success but no matter how you slice it, dedication is going to be a key ingredient to our success. Here are a few things that are working for me:

1. I commit myself to doing SOMETHING WA-related every day. This may just be logging into the WA site and responding to comments on my site and checking out any new followers. It could be researching potential key words. It could be watching one of the fantastic wabinars that have been put out recently. It just has to be SOMETHING. What this does for me is it keeps my mind and focus on the success of my site. I don't give myself any chance to lose interest or chase a shiny object.
2. I expand my knowledge every week. Each week I've been learning something new. Since I know pretty much nothing (relatively speaking) this has been an easy task because I can just search for "how to make first page" or something like that and dozens of great blogs and trainings pop up for me. I'm a big believer in that you can never know too much. There will always be someone out there that knows something you don't and the minute you let your thirst for knowledge subside you will be passed by your competition.
3. I have set a realistic expectation for articles. As I said before, I do this part-time. I don't have the time to write quality posts every single day in order to expedite my Google rankings. What I have promised myself is that I will publish two QUALITY articles per week. One on Wednesday and one on the weekend (shooting for Saturday since I seem to get more traffic on that day). I know some weeks I'll be more inspired to write than others so I take advantage of that and leave articles in the draft folder for the weeks I either go on vacation or just simply don't have the energy to keep pace.
4. I attempt to help people here at WA. I don't know all the answers but I try to offer what little knowledge I have gained when and where I can. I visit the Activity Dashboard on a regular basis and read the unanswered questions. If I can provide any constructive input, I do. More often than not I can't but there's a side benefit to this exercise -- it gets me thinking about the other things I don't know.

Build your website like it's your job and maybe one day it will be!