Back in August I created my very first blog. I was naiive back than, I was under the impression, if you build it, people will come. Ha ha ha, I made sure my blogs were rich in keywords, rich in content, and had google adsense all over the page.

A blog is great, but it's nothing if you don't have a page ranking, or at the very least traffic. Since I created my blog it's been four months. Do you know how much I've made with google adsense? A whole $6.00. Wow am I getting somewhere.

That's why I am grateful I found performancing, indeed.com, and craigslist. I'm also glad that I started looking for freelance writing and blogging jobs. If I hadn't, than I wouldn't have made $700.00 this month.

I've read other blogs that claim to make $1000 just from their blogs, and someday I would love that, but for now I do what I can, to get that extra Christmas money.

This article is dedicated to explaining how I made $700 this month, and how it'll continue each month. First thing, join perfomancing, create your own blog. Update it regularly. You'll be surprised by the people who contact you just from performancing. Check craigslist, this is a valuable resource. Check Craigslist daily for jobs in your area. Craigslist isn't as popular as monster or workopolis, so you don't have nearly the competition.

Other places to check are problogger, indeed, ifreelance, etc. Some places you need to pay membership for, I would suggest you research this before you spend money. I managed to find all my jobs without paying for a costly membership.

How I make $700 a month is this: being a freelance reporter for Cheezhead.com, writing two reviews for Eaton Webdirectory, writing 20 ehow articles for $300 for demand studios, and writing for a Canadian Blog. I have only just begun my freelance journey, but already I am quite profitable.

As long as you have a portfolio, a place to demonstrate your skills and abilities, and you are always applying for jobs, they will come. Just make sure you never rush your jobs, and you give high quality articles or features. If you do, you'll be surprised what your jobs may grow into. They may turn into a steady gig, or they may give a chance you normally wouldn't get.

Either way, if it wasn't for all the tips on performacning, I don't think I would be nearly as far today with writing as I am. So thanks for that.

This article was inspired by an offhand rant in an IM session with David - thank you for listening mate.

Over the weekend I was looking at my own life (you know, the usual introspective Sundays) when I was - to put it mildly - interrupted by another whining session from someone who has been seeking success all their life and hasn't achieved it. It made me angry at the time (hence the rant) but after a while I figured that for most people, going from failure to success was a process that they just couldn't get started on.

I've tried to catalog that process here. It all starts with a plea to ...

10. Stop Whining.

The world is a tough place, we get it. We ALL GET IT. You're not doing yourself any favors by focusing on the bad stuff. In fact, you're just polluting the world and bringing down the energy of the people unfortunate enough to be in hearing distance at the time (or as the case may be, to read what you write). The faster you get over your self-importance and start working on making things better (you know, real shit, like working on that linkbait that you can't crack, or those blog posts that you don't have the time for, or outsourcing that theme you just don't know how to code), the faster you'll get to where you want to be.

The fastest way to stop focusing on what's wrong and start working on improving your current condition is to...

9. Channel Your Energies

Suppose that you're shafted in a project you're working on - the person who's hired you collects the work and makes off without paying you. Understandably, you're angry. But how would you deal with this anger? Venting is good (and necessary), but there is a difference between using that anger to achieve something positive and letting that anger eat you up inside.

Could you set in place practices that ensure that you get paid for 100% of your projects? Is there some way you can get back at the person who's wronged you (religion allows for revenge, in case you're objecting) without spending too much time / energy (publicly cataloging this incident on your blog / website / forum you frequent)?

At every junction of your life you're presented by choices - and (as I venture dangerously into feel-good mumbo-jumbo) you've got a responsibility to yourself to make the right choices - the ones that help you move your life forward and take you towards your goals.

If something evokes a strong emotional reaction, find an outlet, get the initial and strongest reaction out of your system and then channel your remaining emotions into something constructive. To do this, you have to...

8. Focus

It's easy to tell yourself that you must focus on a particular task, in practice its virtually impossible to do so if you have problems with paying attention. There's no big secret to razor-sharp focus - barring genetic pre-dispositions and childhood habits, the best you can do to help yourself focus is to:

• catalog distractions and ruthlessly eliminate them.
• setup a stable daily routine for your work - forming stable work habits are the best way to get (and stay) focused on your work.

The biggest obstacle to focused effort is your resistance to doing tasks / work that you're not interested in (and in contrast, the easiest way to build focus is to work on something you enjoy). This leads us to the next two steps...

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Have you ever had one of your ideas 'stolen' and used by someone else soon after you shared them in a public setting? If yes, you'll know the frustration and anger that accompanies such a case. It could have been when you were in school and someone else stood up and took the credit for your work, or in a professional setting where a colleague took your idea and ran with it (and thus took the credit).

It's always about 'the credit', isn't it?

Experience tells us to keep our best ideas to ourselves - why give away the store when you can profit from it in the future, right?

The only problem with this approach - the hoarding approach - is that we don't always have the time to work on all of our ideas. And that means that for every project that we work on, 20+ others go undone, because of a lack of time. So at this point, we're at a cross-roads - you don't want to share freely because those are your ideas but you also don't have the time to work on them.

I don't believe in giving it all away for free - sure, to some it may sound noble but in terms of value you know that your ideas are worth something, and in most cases, worth more than the goodwill that will be generated from giving them away for free.

An acceptable alternative may be to develop your ideas and then distribute them, for a price. For example, think of Private Label Rights (PLR) products. In theory, PLR products are components of a ready-made business that you can take, personalise and get started with almost immediately (a good example of this would be the PLR articles provided by PLRPro).

Depending on the time available to you, you could develop your ideas to the point of a short 10-page report ($7 value or even free), into a 50-100 page ebook ($19-$49 or again free), into full-fledged running blog (which you can then sell to make a nice profit) or anywhere in between.

Let's say that I want to get into the self-help niche but don't have time for it. So what do I do?

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