​Giving up.  

Or, giving up in order to try something new is an area where I should (up to this point) have some kind of medal for.   

I’m well versed in the art of saying “who gives a f*ck” or “this will never work”, or “I suddenly realised that it’s not what I actually want”, or “maybe it’s not meant to be” or, “the universe doesn’t want me to do it”. 

And about 10 million other excuses that I’ve given myself over the years.

And, I’ve also managed to not give up on quite a few things in my life over the last few years (despite feeling sometimes and often that I should be doing something else). 

If you are thinking about giving up.

Whether it’s on your blog, or on your career, or in your relationship, or on your fitness plan or any other area of your life.  I’d like to offer my thoughts & learnings so far on what I’ve found about giving up. 

And I hope that you can also share your thoughts too! 

The story actually starts in the outback of Australia. My brother and I were fruit picking grapes at a farm in the scorching heat, trying to earn some money as skint backpackers aged about 22.  

The working conditions were terrible.  If you think your office is tough, try picking grapes in 40-degree heat with no access to water and hundreds of flies buzzing around your head.  It was really, really terrible. 

When we asked for water, the farmer looked at us as if we were insane.  We literally couldn’t believe no-one else had asked for water before. It was crazy and we had another 6 weeks of it.  

6 hours in we had managed to pick a couple of buckets of grapes each (and probably ate quite a few too) I was settling into the rhythm doing my survival thing, pacing myself for the next 6 weeks.

My brother was already making an escape plan. 

Lets quit he said. 

QUIT?!  We’ve only just started, I replied, amazed at the suggestion.  Quitting just wasn’t in my vocabulary at that time.  No, we can’t do that I continued. 

Well, why not?  He replied. 

This one phrase shook me.  Actually yeah, "why the hell not" my mind was saying.  But I’d beat it back with thoughts of resilience, commitment, finishing what you started.

However, after several more hours of exhausting work and still an afternoon to go, it didn’t take much convincing to tip me over the edge.   

So, we quit.   

We basically just left our secateurs and our buckets and ran away from the farm. 

Finding a tap on the way out to hydrate and filling up an empty bottle of water we found for the journey back. 

There was no transport so we had to walk. 

To be honest, I don’t remember the walk aside from it being 40 degrees and endless road, I’m pretty sure it took us several hours to get home.

I got heat stroke and took several days to recover so my brother has a better memory of the actual escape than me. 

But, we escaped.  We complained to the people who assigned us to the job and demanded better working conditions.  And so, we got placed in an air-conditioned peach packing farm. 

Ah, the luxury! 

Water, several breaks throughout the day, lunch & air conditioning! We were made up. 

Our life had been drastically improved thanks to the act of GIVING UP. 

I swear this occasion then set a precedent for me and my life for the following years to come.  In my head from then on it was like, but if I give up then things will get so much easier and better and my life will be improved.

So, that, I think is where my ability to give up came from. 

And it’s filtered into lots of areas of my life, especially career. 

I’ve tried so many businesses over the years! So many different paths!  Even when I eventually found one I really loved; Teaching Mindfulness & Meditation, I still gave it up thinking that working on Ginger Marketing would be easier. 

Yes, Ginger Marketing and growing this business has been easier to monetize and earn a living from, but I could have found a way to continue my meditation & Ginger Marketing at the same time.

The grass is greener affects us all. 

Social media has a big part to play in it right.  

We see other people traveling the world, showing us their shopping haul or sharing their business revenue.   We see blog income reports and hear about others success and it’s really easy to think;

It must be the thing I picked. 

It must be that this topic isn’t very popular to write about.

Or, my business model isn’t working.

Or, this industry is losing traction. 

When it comes to relationships we might think that if only we had someone who was more like us, who listened more, who paid attention, who was more present to what we want, who booked more surprises and was more romantic (I’m speaking for the straight girls here as I don’t have experience of another type of relationship!). 

What I’ve come to realize is.  Very often, whenever I have these thoughts about giving up, moving on and doing something else the best thing I can do is to stand still. 

Whenever I feel like running away and throwing caution to the wind for a better, easier, more fulfilling life I’ve realized that if I can’t appreciate the amazing life I already have, there must be something going a little bit cray cray. 

​Standing still when we feel like giving up means that we can start to listen to what is really going on.
 
The issue could be as straightforward as too much time on social media and comparisonitis is setting in. 

It could be that I’ve forgotten to appreciate the little things in life that I love.

Or, it could be that it is time for a change.

Change is okay, change is great. But, that change can be something you add, not always something you take away.

As an example. Lately, I’ve realized how much I love getting on the phone and connecting with people.  It’s something I did a lot of with City Calm, my meditation business. And I miss that. 

Instead of thinking, well I don’t get to do that with Ginger Marketing, therefore, I can’t continue on with this business (*places hand to head in a dramatic way).  

I’m thinking how that can be incorporated into my business.   

How can that small change be made so that I improve on what I have already?

Often, when we want to shake things up there is a lesson to be learned. 

But that lesson can be applied to our current situation without needing to completely overhaul everything and start from scratch. 

Something which has really helped me with this is yoga & meditation. Without these practices, I’d find it very hard to stand still when I feel emotional, sad, confused and a whole host of other stuff.

It gives a certain resilience that despite feeling all these things you can just keep on going on!

Every time I decide to stand still, life gets better & better. 

Very often a breakthrough is on the other side of that still space right at the moment when everything feels like it just doesn’t fit. 

Instead of JUST DO IT (thanks Nike)

My new phrase is

JUST STAND STILL 

And I hope I've encouraged you to try it out for size and see if it works for you.   Your break through is just around the corner I can feel it.

Well, that’s about it, this is less of a tips post and more of a share.

I felt like sharing on the topic of giving up, its something I think we can all relate to. And, I’d love to hear about your experiences too in the comments!  

Something we aim to do with every guest post we publish is to spark conversation.  By conversation, we mean comments & social media shares. 

The more engagement a blog post gets, the more reach it gets and exposure for our clients.

So, examining why people share.

And why people leave comments & how we can spark more of them is important. 

In this post, we are going to examine the types of people who leave comments & their motivation for leaving comments too.

Different Types Of Commentators

Type 1: The link spam

As in everything in life, all commentators were not created equal. Every week I delete spam comments from this blog, the type of comments that say nothing but have “Dental Clinic London” written into the comment name. 

Obviously, these are the types of comments that do not add value to your blog and are only written for SEO purposes.   I’d suggest you delete these ASAP and don’t encourage comment spam practices.


Type 2: The legit 

The golden grail of commenter, this person is either someone in your community who regular leaves comments and comes back and reads your content.  

Or, it’s someone who is new to your community who is interested in the article content and has some value to add to the discussion.

This study of over 8500 commentators shows the number 1 reason people leave comments is when they know something about the subject of the article that wasn’t in the article.  

Why not ask readers if they have a valuable tip to share at the end of your post?  Encourage that kind of engagement & start to see your interaction grow.


Type 3: The partner

There are lots of blogging communities you can join in order to post your latest content in order to receive promotion and comments from other bloggers. 

This can be a beneficial tactic to kick-start the virality of your post. Once you have a couple of comments, when you promote the post to a wider net of people, they will be more likely to add their opinion as well.  

Everyone knows that the more engagement you get on a post, the more you are likely to receive.  

The motivation for this person is that they will also receive comments and promotion from the community on their articles.  So, whilst beneficial to kick start a post, it is also important to ensure you get organic comments from an audience interested in what you have to say as well. 


Type 4: The Troll

We all know this person.  For some reason, they have decided that stirring things up online is important to them.  

Credit for image American Scientist

This is the kind of person who cares more about how many reply comments they trigger, then learning more on the topic or engaging in a conversation.   

Really, they just want to start an online fight.  This post highlights a couple of motivations for trolling, one of them being, the bad mood the person is in.  The internet provides a safe haven for many to take out their aggression and anger online.  

The best way to deal with these types of comments is to delete, and if you can block them from your community or blog.

That's a wrap for this post! 

We’d love to know, can you identify another type of commentator? Is there a type we have missed?

If you have been blogging for 12 months or more, the chances are that your blog is at a point where it can start making money from sponsored posts.

These are posts which you put up for a company in order to advertise their service or product, usually in a non-promotional way.

It is important to disclose these posts as either a collaborative, guest or sponsored post.  It is also up to you whether you follow or no follow the links inside the post.

You may have already been approached by companies wanting to guest post and contribute to your blog.  Or, perhaps they want you to write an article and link to them. Or, include a link to an existing post.

Sponsored posts are an additional revenue stream for many bloggers.  And for companies a great way to advertise their product or service.

In this post, I’m going to give some tips on how you can make more money from sponsored posts.  I’m going to focus specifically on the types of things Marketing Managers are looking for from the bloggers they work with.

To make more money now and into the future, it is important to make sure your blog is exactly what the budget holders are looking for. After all, they are the ones making a decision about whether to work with you and how much they can pay.

Foster An Engaged Audience

Marketing Managers are tasked with working with bloggers who are at different stages of their blog. That means they are not just looking for blogs with big audiences.  

However, there is one thing that every Marketing Manager wants to see, whether the blogger has 100,000 per month traffic or just 1k traffic per month.  

That is engagement.

​Your blog should have comments and social media shares which show that your audience is interested in what you have to say on your topic of choice.

It’s advisable to spend a good percentage of your time interacting with your audience and replying to comments on your blog and different social media channels. Interaction leads to a more engaged audience likely to comment again.

Make sure you have visible social sharing buttons, make it really easy for your readers to share your content. Another tip is to sign up for Tailwind.  On this platform, you are able to join Tribes relevant to your niche.

These are groups of bloggers who are interested in pinning and engaging with each other's content.  This is a great way to boost your shares.

Keep your blog focused on one or several key topics

Marketing Managers are looking for experts, not generalists.  You might think that by having a section on business, beauty, lifestyle, fashion, travel, food & yoga, you are broadening your chance to get sponsored posts.

This might work in the short term, but you will likely end up working with lower quality clients and get yourself into a sponsored post rut.  

The higher paying clients are going to be more picky about who they work with - and they are looking for topic experts. Stick to your area of expertise and your earnings in the long term will increase.

Strike a balance between original & sponsored content

A ratio of 70:30 is ideal.  70% original content, 30% sponsored content.  So, if you were to publish 10 posts in a month, 3 of them would be sponsored.  

If your ratio is a much higher % of sponsored content beware, you may be putting the long-term success of your blog at risk.  

Higher paying clients care about original vs sponsored content ALOT.   You are also at risk of triggering a spam score from Open Site Explorer.

Open Site Explorer is a tool you can use to see the backlinks coming into and out of your blog.  If you have too many outgoing links and not enough coming in, this can be seen as a sign that your blog is spamming or selling links.  

​It is very important that you keep your internal and external link ratio in check.

CHECK YOUR SPAM SCORE HERE

Provide extra value

Always think about the long term relationship you are fostering.  There may be more campaigns for this client, or the Marketing Manager may move on to a different client.  

If you are front of mind as a blogger who delivers extra value, you will be front of mind for the next campaign.  

Extra value includes; a quick response, quick turn-around time, friendly manner & social media sharing.

Provide a high quality sponsored post

Whether you are writing the post or the client is submitting it, the amount of time you spend on the final post matters.

Make sure the post is spell checked, formatted correctly and includes high-quality images.  Adding tweet this buttons to encourage social sharing would really stand out!

Content quality has become absolutely paramount, so make sure you are the type of blogger who always does their best and puts their audience first.

We hope this list has helped you! Have we forgotten anything?  Let us know your own tips in the comments below.