The first day of a new month is always exciting for me. It’s like having a clean slate, the old month and whatever you did or didn’t do is in the past, and you have the chance to set new goals and challenge yourself to achieve them. And when you screw up as often as I do when it comes to getting things done, being able to choose to start over is a really good thing.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been really lax over the past little while when it comes to creating new content, whether it’s articles, blog posts, or even new products… the ability to sit my butt in a chair and do the work has failed me miserably. But that’s all about to change…

I’ve been watching Tiffany Dow and following her progress on her 30 Days of Productivity, and now her 30 Days of Making Money challenges. I’ve been amazed watching her videos and reading her blog posts about how much work she gets done in a day and how much money she makes from it. Tiffany’s success has inspired me to really get motivated and sit my butt down and get to work.

So for this month (June 2010) I’ve decided to create my own challenge — 30 Days of Creativity — where I will create at least one new piece of content every single day this month.

In a nutshell, my plan for the month is to:

a) create new info products
b) build new websites based on the IPK method
c) get comfortable with using video

I’ve got a list of half-finished projects that I want to clear off my desk, so those will be the first things I work on. They take up so much mental energy just in thinking about getting them done, that this month they’re either going to get finished or get trashed.

I also bought the Info Product Killer course a couple of weeks ago and have been slowly working through it all. I’m pretty slow at the site building so far — not because it’s hard to do, but more because of that inability to keep the body in a chair long enough to actually finish a site. So my main goal with this is to get comfortable enough with the process that I can complete a site in the few hours that the course suggests is all you need. (And yes, that’s an affiliate link and I will get a commission if you decide to purchase.)

The final thing on my list is to start working with video. I’ve done a couple of short videos for The Acorn Stash, but nothing like what I want to be able to do. It’s a huge step outside my comfort zone because I’m not a video person at all. I’d much rather read that watch, but as I keep being told, I’m in the minority these days as most people would rather watch a video than read a report.

You might have noticed that so far I haven’t said a word about making money. That’s because for this month, making money is not my priority at the moment. Of course, everything will eventually lead to some form of income because I am working at building a lasting business here, but for the moment it’s more important for me to actually get things finished and out where they can be seen and judged on their own merits rather than my own penchant for perfectionism.

I’m working at changing my mindset from one that’s based on fear of being rejected or ridiculed to one where I am confident enough in my creations to put them out and let you decide how useful they are to you.

And that’s it for me today. My son had a day off today, and that made it pretty much a write-off for getting anything really constructive done. In light of that, I’m counting this post as my first installment. I couldn’t let Day One go by without producing at least something!

Tomorrow is the day when things really start happening around here, and I’ll be back tomorrow night with a progress report!

Thanks for being here!

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I was working on my plan for the rest of the year, and thought it might be a good idea before I dive into something totally new, to write an update on how my two goals for August are going.

Goal #1 – To Complete the 30 Day Challenge successfully.

Well, it’s looking like 2009 is going to be a bust as well. I got stuck early on in choosing a niche and really haven’t moved beyond that point yet. I’m not making any excuses for myself this time. I didn’t get it done, and that’s that. But there’s still 7 days left and I am going to be doing as much as I can over the next week to see how far I can get with it.

Goal #2 – To Run a Successful PLR Giveaway for 30 Days

I started about 5 days later than I had planned because I totally underestimated the time it would take me to set everything up. But now that I have, I’m so glad I did it. We’re on Day 14 right now, and the blog is averaging about 20 visits a day. It’s not much at the moment, but that’s my fault too because I haven’t spent nearly as much time on promoting it as I should have.

My secondary goal now for the rest of this month is to focus on getting the visitor count up to 100 visits a day and I’ll be experimenting with several different traffic building methods to do that. So stay tuned because I’ll be sharing some of what I’m doing here.

Regardless of what happens with the traffic from the giveaway, I consider it a success. It’s taken me a long time step out from behind the scenes and actually start to do something for myself and having already done 14 straight days of blog posts and PLR gifts is a major accomplishment for me. And there’s still 16 more days to go! Who knows what they will bring.

Have a great day!

Thanks for being here!

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I probably should’ve posted this yesterday, and don’t really have a good excuse for why I didn’t. I’m reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and blogging about it over on HelenaRitchie.com. I’m only on Chapter 2 so far, and am really finding it mindblowing. It’s the first time I’ve read the book and I can see why people say that it has changed their lives even though I’m only 30 pages in. I can already feel the changes in myself just from having read that little bit.

One of the most important things I’ve learned so far is how to put Hill’s six step formula for turning desires into reality into action. I’m really great and the desire part and not so great at the follow-through but I’m aiming to change that starting now.

For August I have two main goals:

1. To complete the 30 Day Challenge successfully. I’ve started the challenge every year since 2006 and so far have found ways to distract myself from finishing every year. This year I AM going to finish all 30 days and have a positive result to show for it at the end.

2. To run a successful giveaway from August 5 to September 5 to celebrate my birthday, and to build a solid foundation for The Ritchie Report. To do that I’ll be giving away a gift with PLR every day when you subscribe.

Why PLR? Because I love the stuff, and I know that whatever direction I end up focusing my business on, that PLR will need to play a major role. I’m just not sure at this point where I fit into the overall scheme of things, and my ulterior motive in giving you lots of PLR resources over the coming days is to get to know you, and to find out how I can help you.

Ultimately, at the end of the 30 days I will have a fully developed USP and know exactly where I’m going in order to achieve the rest of my goals for 2009.

I’ll be spending the rest of today getting the opt-in page set up and ready. Although the actual giveaway doesn’t start until August 5th I’ve got a couple of surprises for the early-birds. If you want to know the minute the page goes live, please follow me on twitter because I’ll be posting there once everything’s set up.

Have an incredible day!

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It’s been awhile since I posted anything here, or anywhere else for that matter, and I must apologize for that. Once again it seems I bit off more than I bargained for with various challenges and projects in the months leading up to Christmas. I even spent a week planning out how to do a “100 sites in 100 days” project after reading a discussion on the turbo membership forum.

Then reality set it, along with its attendant overwhelm. Who am I kidding? I have a hard enough time doing one site in one hundred days, let alone one a day!

And so I found a compromise where I can work on my list of 100 sites, but not move on to a new one until the first one has made at least its first dollar. I also decided that in doing so, I will find ways to make use of the mountains of private label rights and master resale rights material that I have hoarded on various hard drives around here.

Then I decided I would blog about the whole process, so that anyone who’s interested can follow along. But, in typical Ruthie style, I procrastinated a bit on starting the blogging process, so the project is actually in its seventh day today.

Part of me thinks, why would anyone care what I have to say. It’s not like I’m some super successful guru or anything. And being as introverted as I am, it’s really hard for me to intentionally put myself into a position to be criticized and not totally in control. So as much as this is an exercise in creating profitable websites, it’s also an exercise in stretching my own comfort zone. I’m taking bigger, bolder actions in order to achieve my bigger, bolder dreams.

So here we are, sixteen days into the new year. It’s finally time to say Happy New Year, and let’s get to work!

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Your “must do” list, that is.

You do have one, don’t you?

Allow me to explain, in the manner of the newly converted…

One of the drawbacks I’ve noticed while focusing on getting the new article site ready is that although spending all your time on one website until it’s up and running and turning a profit is really great in theory, it doesn’t translate so well into practice when you have more than one site to maintain.

As a matter of fact, it can be downright stressful. Especially if those other sites are done in a format where your visitors are expecting to find fresh content on a regular basis (like a blog).

So I’ve been feeling a little guilty about neglecting everything else while I rebuild one site. (I’m hiding it well, don’t you think?) I was whining to a friend about it, and he came up with an excellent idea…

He told me to create a “must do” list.

A “must do” list is better than a to do list, because it takes all the guess work out of it. The idea, he told me, is to set a schedule for what sites need to be worked on every day whether it be for adding new content, updating a blog, or doing some promotion, etc. and then that’s the bare minimum that you “must do” every day.

Now, for the ultra-organized, this may seem like a no-brainer but for me it was like a light bulb going off! To actually sit down and create a schedule of which sites and blogs I would focus on for a given day was something I had never even thought of. My time management planning was always more along the lines of getting up in the morning and doing the “gee what do I feel like working on today” routine. (That could go a long way toward explaining the stack of unfinished project folders on my desk.)

Not anymore.

I spent the weekend creating a schedule so that all of my sites get updated at least once a week and turned it into my “must do” checklists. It’s the first list I tackle every morning now, and I know exactly what I need to be writing about on any given day. It helps to keep me focused too, because I know that once it’s done and everything on the list is crossed off for the day, I can go on to my other to-do lists — the ones with the fun stuff on them.

And at that point, “what shall I work on today” takes on a whole new meaning. When the must-dos are done, it means I can give free reign to my inspiration and creativity, and just go with the flow… but that’s a topic for another day.

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