Getting The Right Mindset For Success

Getting The Right Mindset For Success

My journey into SEO and building sites started a little more than 10 years ago. I’d just finished up my MBA and was working a boring cubicle job at a medical devices company in Columbus, Ohio. I spent most of my workday pretending to do my work while daydreaming about striking it rich online and doing nothing all the time.

You see, in my spare time I dabbled with a site in the personal finance niche and I was certain that it was my ticket to a well-paid life of laziness. My goal was just making money (and doing nothing).

There’s nothing wrong with epic amounts of cash being your goal, but there’s a reason that I went on to have more cubicle jobs after this one before I was able to finally leave the office jobs behind me.

My motivations were all wrong.

I didn’t want to work hard to achieve my results. Why? Because personal finance was never really something that I was crazy passionate about. I half-assed my content, I didn’t update the site regularly, oh and it was on a Blogspot because I didn’t even want to spend the money for a real domain name.

While working at my last cubicle job in Burbank, California, my mindset began to change. I’d started freelance writing in my spare time and discovered how much easier it was to write on topics that I was interested in as opposed to those that I was not interested in at all.

Driving in Los Angeles traffic during rush hour for almost a year also helped me to fine tune my real goals and motivations. I didn’t want to just have a ton of cash from my online ventures – I needed to have a lifestyle that allowed me to do whatever I want (and to never deal with rush hour traffic again), and I especially wanted to do a lot of traveling. This self-reflection showed me what I really wanted, and my freelance writing epiphany had given me some of the knowledge that I needed to work towards making those goals happen.

Before you even start to plot out a niche authority site, I think that you need to take a moment to do some self-reflection of your own – and make an actual plan for success. I’d like to be able to tell you that I left that financial analyst job in Burbank and immediately started working on a passion project that allowed to meet all my goals. That didn’t happen because I didn’t make a plan.

Instead, I made a series of really shitty websites that, along with my freelance writing side hustle, somehow allowed me to earn enough money to cover living in Los Angeles. I don’t advise you to take this misstep. Not only because it’s a bad idea that gets you off track, but because the landscape of ranking in Google has changed so much that you’d likely never be able to pull it off without investing a decent amount of money in PBN links – and your rankings would probably be short term.

Once I decided that I wanted to make websites that could last for years, and covered a topic of interest, then I began seeing success.

Before starting your site, you need to get in the mindset of creating an authority site that offers lots of value, as opposed to an affiliate site that doesn’t really bring a lot to the table and might not even be ranking in a year.

You need to be able to treat building your authority site as a business, not like a hobby.

Even if you have a “day job” and can only devote part-time hours to your authority site project, do so with the mindset of building a real asset in the niche and you will see success.

Also, define for yourself what success means for you. For some people, it might be getting their dog authority site recognized as one of the leaders in the industry. For others, it might be making enough money to live on from something that they love, like a guitar authority site or a home improvement authority site.

You also need to plan for that success. Personally, I created a 5-year plan a few years ago that started with me earning enough from my sites to do a one-year trip around the world without having to worry about sticking to a budget.

When I made that plan at the end of 2013, I was earning around $1000/month from one site and working as a Google Quality Rater to earn the rest of the money that I needed to live on each month. Despite that, I booked a one-way ticket to Norway for six months from that date. I was determined to make it happen. And I did.

I ended up only traveling for 10 straight months because I got tired of it, which sounds crazy but it’s true. The best part is that I ended up making more money from my sites (I created more while traveling) during that period than I ever had until that point.

In 2015, I hunkered down to focus more on refining my process and growing my sites, while still traveling whenever I wanted and hitting that six-figure yearly income goal. And by 2016, I was taking $10,000 vacations whenever I felt like it.

This all fits into my 5-year plan, but yours might be completely different. For 2018 (the final year of the initial plan), I'm supposed to be buying up property around the world and starting a real-world business. Am I on track for that? Actually, I am! Maybe those are some of the things that signify success for you as well.

Or maybe you want to buy your mom a new house, have enough money and time to start a non-profit, invest in a horror film, or something else. It doesn’t matter what it is, just know what you’re working towards and it will make it so much easier to get shit done on your site.

You need to be willing to work hard to meet your goals, without taking shortcuts or putting out a half-assed site. So, get your mindset in check now, or you’ll be shortchanging yourself in the end.

My quick 4-step formula for getting your mindset in check is:

    Define your goals and make a 5-year plan
    Vow to only put your time into projects that you are passionate about
    Decide now that you will not look for shortcuts
    Dedicate yourself to being the best in your niche and giving your all to your project, no matter what

If you can commit to those four steps above, then I see no reason why you can’t check off all the goals in your own 5-year plan. Now, let’s get you started on creating the best authority site in your niche!