You Are What You Say

Posted by RP

May 5, 2008

Darren has a very interesting article here:

Today I was scanning through some emails from readers and it struck me that so many of those that I hear from are suffering from a similar ailment. Let me share a few excerpts from emails I received today and see if you can spot what it is:

“Darren, I’m just a small blogger but was wondering….”
“I’m no A-list blogger but I wanted to let you know…..”
“I’ve only got 70 readers a day….”
“My RSS reader counter is embarrassing….”
“I don’t know any HTML…. I feel like I have so much to learn….”
“I’m just starting out and don’t know much about blogging…..”
“In comparison to others I’m just a small fry….”
“I don’t write as well as they do….”

Notice something about all of these emails?

They all define themselves by something that they are not achieving, that they don’t know, that they don’t have…. …If you want to grow your profile with other bloggers in your niche then I think it’s really important to get the balance right. ….

Now some may not be all that happy that I am ‘echoing’ what Darren wrote. Indeed, I have been know to issue a few choice one-liners or two about the blogging ‘echo chamber. But I am not Darren, nor are his readers mine … and this is an important topic. Indeed, in many ways it is one of the most important topics I could write about, because I have been ‘tinkering’ with blogging for money and other forms of making money online way too long a time. So, indeed, have most of you reading this article.

John Chow, a fellow blogger in some ways almost diametrically opposed to Darren, but also a proven money maker wrote and interesting post on this subject about two months ago as well. I could go on, but I won’t (long posts are sometimes worth it, but like everything else I need to learn to mix things up a bit better).

You are what you think you are … you are who you say you are. So, if you want to be ’small time’ and ‘wishing you could’, then just keep thinking that is who you are and where you belong. You (and I) are exactly where we deserve to be.

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