Blogging for Practitioners

I’m breaking one of my own rules of “evergreen” posts — which is to begin by referring to my absence. “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while” is such a waste of type in most cases, as many of the people reading it come along well after the break and miss the time context entirely. For the majority of readers, this post is one click away from the last one…

But in this case, the extreme hiatus of exactly one entire year deserves a bit of explaining. As you may recall, I experienced something of an identity crisis and felt I was smothering under the commitment to continue being a blog marketing coach. One of the things I like to practice in my life is taking an axe to things that are causing me discomfort, wherever possible. I like to go through the motions and observe the emotions of what it feels like to release something that’s not working. It’s a great way for me to get clear about where my priorities lie.

In the case of relationships (and of course I cheekily treated my blogging break here as a break up with my readers), I observe the distance of exactly one calendar year. I approached the hiatus as a potentially permanent termination (even though I wasn’t sure whether or not that would be my ultimate decision). It wasn’t — I’m back. I never really went anywhere… I’ve been consulting with you individually all these months.

My Business and Blogging Goals from One Year Ago:

1 — Reach the 10,000+ subscriber goal post I’ve mentioned establishing with my agent when I launched Shift Your Spirits.

I reached 10 K in readership Fall, 2008.

2 — Achieve and sustain a 5 K per month minimum income. I’m a single guy with no dependents to support and 5K represents a very comfortable monthly income for me — AND that amount well exceeds any full time salary I’d ever been paid working for someone else (about double). So, no fear-based or logical argument about the relative safety of having a job-job versus the challenges of being self-employed can realistically creep in, at this point in the game, to undermine my perseverance. I had hovered in the 3 - 4 K per month bracket for a long time. I questioned whether or not I should be advising people about making a decent living online if I could not present myself as an example.

Right around the time the economy supposedly began to hit rock bottom, I hit my financial growth goals traveling in the other direction. I have maintained the 5 K minimum for four months now, from November 2008 to present. Which affirms for me the feeling that while outdated business models may be crumbling, this newer, lighter, more global and democratic model indicates an entrepreneurial vision of the future.

3 — Teach workshops on intuition and develop a home-study version of the courses. I taught a few live workshops on divine dialoguing and automatic writing, and then took the material into the teleconferencing realm, with great success.

By the end of the year I eventually produced Automatic Intuitive Response — a home-study, digital product version of the courses to create a passive income stream.

4 — Train other practitioners in my field to do the intuitive readings that I do. This is a big project. I’ve been working on a professional intuitive certification program of my own for many months.

I now have three students I am mentoring locally as a way of beta testing my course materials.

5 — Develop my sales funnel with a greater variety of price points. Obviously, the digital version of the workshop provided a more affordable price point for those who may not want to invest in private readings. The professional intuitive training will cap the high-end of my products and services.

6 — Establish an affiliate program to grow my business while helping others grow theirs. Done. With more to come…

7 — Study with an expert in my field and seek additional certifications for my work. It’s not like professional intuitives can just take a class at a community college, even if we want to. I have enough academic degrees for now — I wanted something with a shorter time commitment and a focused, practical result. I also wanted to observe a master in my niche from a practical perspective. I chose Doreen Virtue’s Angel Therapy Practitioners ® program as it most closely overlapped in many ways with what I’ve already been doing.

8 — Find a community of colleagues and peers with which to network. I met some amazing people, found a soul mate, and joined an enormous global group of like-minded peers.

9 — Travel as part of my career. For years now I’ve had the flexibility and mobility of a business that can go anywhere I can take a laptop, but I didn’t have the additional income to make that happen. My trips to Hawaii and Phoenix/Sedona were a nice manifestation of this dream scenario.

10 — Write more of what I want to be writing. For my creative well-being, I desperately needed to prioritize my non-blogging writing to make time to work on fiction and memoirs. I quickly carved out a space in my writing schedule by ditching this blog (for awhile) and reallocating the time to other projects.

Basically, none of these goals was centered on blogging about blogging. At the time I went on hiatus from this blog, only twenty percent of my total income came from marketing consultations and tutorials. (I figured by allowing this blog to drift on its own, I would likely kill off any remaining involvement on this end of things…)

But many unforeseen developments brought me back here:

• Although my overall income did continue to grow by focusing on Shift Your Spirits, my percentage of income from marketing consultations and tutorials remained consistent. I’ve continued to receive requests for blog coaching from this site even without any active promotion or marketing efforts.
• The enormous Angel Therapy Practitioners community has generated a whole new crop of students interested in marketing their practices/businesses on the web the way I do. I’ve discovered that there are more people than I ever realized who have a healing arts practice, and perhaps some minimal web site presence, yet no active blog marketing strategy.
• I’ve already foreseen that the students I’m teaching to do professional readings will require my business model and marketing strategy as well. 99% of my clients come from blogging — how else could I advise another coach or medium to generate a clientele?
• A number of clients were booking Spirit Guide Readings to ask me for blogging advice — even those who were not interested in the “woo woo” personal/spiritual consultation! I created special coaching options for these business clients here, and they found them through links on my Shift Your Spirits About page or inquired by email.
• You know what I discovered while not “officially” writing about marketing? I LOVE to talk about marketing! I crave this topic of conversation. I enjoy teaching the practical aspects of blog development as much as I do intuitive development. I have boundless blab for this topic, and it provides a healthy balance for me.
• I feel guilty about the fact that I am constantly learning and changing and evolving my business, yet I haven’t talked about it here at all. In some cases, I have done a complete 180 on some of my recommendations and it makes me queasy to think that I have not corrected or appended [the now possibly "bad" advice] I’ve put out there… I have a few additional posts I plan to put up ASAP — like, this week — to rectify the situation.

I never went anywhere. I never really stopped talking and teaching about the blogging. Now one thing is for certain — I have no desire to be a general problogging guru. The subject is “kinda well-covered,” if you overlook the fact that most of the business blogging advice is clearly for other industries. I learn a lot from those guys, but only when I adapt it to my business specifically. And most of the spiritual practitioners who are coming to me for blogging advice are misguided about what works for our field.

So, long story short (and this is definitely on the longer side of what I plan to post here) — for those who are personal development coaches, paraprofessionals, and healing arts practitioners — with goals that resemble my own — I still have a lot left to say. I still want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for others to follow, simply by sharing my personal journey behind the screens.

No Big Pretentious Brand or Trademark to smother under anymore — just a place to leave notes about this part of my life and the business I’m building — the part that is simply Slade, blogging…

Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.

March 2, 2009 | by Slade Roberson | Filed Under Marketing

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