You know what sucks? Me (yes, and vacuum-cleaners. har-har). Because I spend most of my online time, reading other people’s stuff. It’s so easy to get caught up in reading, clicking a link, reading some more, clicking yet another link, and yes – do more reading. Agreed, its great that I keep learning new things every day, but what good will it do me if I don’t do anything with it?

If you said “nothing”, stop reading this post now. Obviously you get it.

Assuming that you want to turn your blogging efforts into something profitable, there is a point where you will have to stop learning, and start doing. All the knowledge in the world will get you nowhere if you don’t use it. You could be an expert on any topic by now, but because you’ve never really shown it, nobody will know. You need to get out there and show the world what you know, attract your own audience, and become a renowned ‘expert’ in your field. (note that when I say expert, I don’t mean you have to be a rocket-scientist. If you want people to come back, give them value for their time. This could be anything from writing extended howtos, reviews or perhaps just funny and entertaining stuff).

Do not go looking for a niche – be the niche!

Here are some of the productivity-enhancers I have been thinking about for myself.

What I need to learn is a way of balancing my information I/O. A lot of the stuff I read gets filtered in my brain. Picking up bits and pieces that are interesting or new to me. I’m still wasting time by reading through an entire article to do this. So one of the obvious ways I’m looking into is to learn speed reading. The time I save with this technique can be used for important things, like playing call of duty writing useful content for my blog.

Something else that I have recently started using are pod-casts. It took me a while to get used to them, but I couldn’t go without them anymore. These are especially handy while I’m driving somewhere for example. Obviously it can be quite dangerous trying to read something on your laptop while you’re behind the wheel, so I suggest you buy yourself an iPod (or just win one here and here) and start downloading relevant pod-casts. (I’m currently completely hooked on the internet business mastery podcast, probably one of the best Internet Marketing pod-casts on the market today). I know I just told you that you should stop learning, but given the situation, you’re better off using that time to learn new things so you can focus on creating stuff once you’re online again.

Start turning that knowledge into profit. Write those wonderful blog posts, share your insightful comments, tweet sweet pearls of wisdom. Get noticed and build a name for yourself online. Start today because the rest of the world will be online tomorrow, and playing catch-up is a bastard.

You could be hesitating or have doubts, because you don’t think your stuff is good enough for anyone else to read. I know I went through a period where I felt I was raising my bar every time I wrote a new post, and I just made it harder and harder for myself to enjoy blogging in the end. That’s why I quit for nearly a year and a half. But I’ve come to realize the simple truth – All you can be is yourself. There’s no point in worrying what other people might think or say about your stuff. Those people will always be there, on- or offline.

*Disclaimer – This post is non tax-deductible, even if you’ve been reading it during office hours.