The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightening and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not. — The Upanishads

Blogging like any other activity psychology. If you want to succeed, you will. I get inspired often, very easily. I’m little emotional, if I come across a sad moment - be in movies, newspaper, books - my eyes become moist. If I watch a movie that’s patriotic or inspirational (like October Sky), I get inspired. I’m saying all this not drive home the point that I’m a emotional jerk but to stress that I get influenced easily. That’s important. It pushes me to perform better and raise the bar every time I blog.

I’ll list some factors that influence me to be inspired, motivated and focused.

Compliments and Comments

Some of the recent comments that some of the visitors observed. It keeps me flattered as well.

“Hey Ashwin.. thanks a ton for the wonderful info… am really encouraged to go ahead with my blog which I was pulling half-heartedly…good going dude…” - Rohan

“Your website is good.. I like you movie reviews/comments/..” - Raveel

“The Title surely caught my attention” - Thilak

“Really nice post Ashwin…. Once more great post.” - Varkey

“Good info, definately it wll help me [...] I will definately refer this article again.” - Ashok

“I was impressed by your web page that was too simple and contains only useful stuff without any ads and promos.” - Pankaj

Thanks a lot guys for the kind words and for keeping me going!

Success Stories of Other Bloggers

I saw the success story of many a-List bloggers, ProBloggers, etc.. and saw how they faired. Some of the very good blogs that I like are that of Copyblogger, eMoms at Home, Guy Kawasaki, ProBlogger, Seobook, Steve Pavlina etc.. Whenever I see their blogs, it makes me feel that my blog not up to the mark. There’s always a room for improvement. How hard they must have worked!

Here is one of the stories that pepped me up: Become a Grinder!. The author goes on to say how hard he worked initially. He worked hard on the site to achieve what he wanted. Now he earns $14,000 a month on that site alone. He says: “My website did not become a success because I thought it was great. It got successful because I spent 3 times the amount of time in making it a successful website”. And signs off with a moral: “If you spend the time to grind out a quality website, even when it looks like it’s failing you will eventually find success if you are truly trying to make the website become a successful.” Inspirational stuff. That was what dreams made off!

Every artist was first an amateur. Patience and Persistence made them successful. They always tend to get richer, more successful, luckier and do everything that seems it’s always right. Their success stories are for people like you and me to emulate and get inspired.

Money

The money that I have earned in almost 11 weeks with AdSense and this blog alone: (Click the thumbnail to see a larger picture)

As of now AdSense is the only way this blog is monetized. Hopefully I’ll diversify my earning stream and increase the revenue.

Traffic

Here is the traffic stats for the past one week:

I must admit that I’m a stats freak. Perhaps I’m guilty of wasting time watching traffic rather than getting busy. I track my site’s traffic with Google Analytics, BAStats, AwStats, 103 bees Search Term Analytics and Stat Counter (see the bottom of this page at Footer). Note that all of these do the same job, but present the stats in different angles, which I love. Still I keep looking for other source to track my site’s traffic.

Traffic that your sites attracts is the single main important factor to judge the success of your site, atleast monetarily. Without traffic, your site will not have authority. For me traffic is a bigger motivator than money.

Not only traffic is important for monetizing the site, but it shows that people do read and appreciate what you say. They look forward to what you have to say and also spread the karma by the word of mouth that this site is cool. They start to trust me and I won’t want to betray that trust.

Passion for the subject

Many visitors who have visited say the article was great, informative, good going, etc.. but all this 9 months none of them have said I write well. Why? Simple - I don’t write that well. What I mean by writing well is like those who write novels, use flowery language and newspaper like articles. But check some of the movie reviews that I have written, they’re really well written ; and see article like this one: Importance of Paid Hosting and Domain name, I had one person and 3-4 people emailing me that it was inspirational. How would have that been possible? Because I did what I always enjoy doing.

Many people will laugh their ass off after seeing the earning and traffic figures. Let them do. Why, even I want to laugh my ass seeing these figures after some time.

I’m earning some small amount with this blog - but to be honest, that alone doesn’t push me to keep chugging. I would have kept blogging even if I didn’t earn money. Having said that I would not have worked hard or taken that extra effort to provide value in every single article that I post here. Passion on the subject is the fire; money, traffic and compliments just add fuel to the fire.

Be motivated and focused all the way. You should have a burning desire to succeed. Inspiration can do wonders, can change you for good. Do whatever it takes to be inspired and motivated. Dream. It doesn’t cost anything to dream. If you don’t dream, that’ll cost you dearly.

So what inspires and motivates you?

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