A couple of very quick updates for you,

DiscoverUnsigned has suffered the inevitable delays of the development process I’m afraid. I thought that things would go perfectly, and whilst they’ve gone very well it looks like we’ll be launching tomorrow (I hope!). Not much to say on this front except to look out for the project launch announcement!

A slightly cooler update is that I’ve been featured by Michael Dunlop over at Retireat21 as part of his list of the ‘Top 30 Bloggers Under 21′. I already knew some of the guys in the list, but I’m in the process of going through all their blogs and meeting some new faces :). Anyway, thanks Michael, it’s an honor! I strongly encourage everyone to go and check out the article and Digg/Stumble it to your hearts content!

Hi readers,

This is quite a big announcement about the blog, but it feels like the right time to make it. I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of PushStandards lately, and have decided that I can’t carry on like I have been doing. I’ve become one of those bloggers who are in the ‘give up’ mentality. But hold on! I’m not giving up, so don’t push the back button yet. I’m merely changing the focus of the site. Firstly, let me go into a little detail about why I’m taking the decision.

The simple as answer is that I believe people blog for two reasons: cash, and the joy of teaching others (99% of people opt for that first option). There is also a third long-term reason of enjoying popularity, but this must follow one of the first two reasons. The reason why I’m not getting either of the first reasons to a good enough extent is the market. Sounds like a lame excuse doesn’t it? But the truth is, that even when I feel that I’ve written something truly insightful and original I’ll find 3 articles like it a week later. There is simply nothing new to write about in the blogging/make-money niches. Of course new trends develop, but there are thousands of people ready to jump on every band-wagon that comes along. The lack of cash follows from this. Quite honestly I don’t have the energy or lack of ethics to monetize a site that I don’t feel passionate about writing for. Sure, I get good traffic, but to really earn making blogging about what thousands of others are spewing out I’d have to get paid a hell of a lot more, and then probably still wouldn’t enjoy it. I actually think that I could become one of the top blogs in these niches. That sounds very pretentious, but I COULD post every day, I COULD promote a hell of a lot, I COULD further my connections with fellow bloggers etc etc… But when I weigh up the effort of doing all of these things to the end reward and ultimately lack of satisfaction it doesn’t weigh up at all.

I’m not unhappy that I started off on this path, as I’ve learnt a LOT (I mean a real lot), but it’s time for a change. With my limited time, and real passion (not a temporary passion) for starting websites and online ventures I figured, why not blog about that? Sure, this is a niche also, but it’s far more genuine. The reason why most people are ripping each others content and blogging about OTHER PEOPLE’S websites is that they don’t have the skill/passion to do something original themselves. Besides, any blogger who blogs about their personal ventures will be doing so in a completely honest, unique way, as everything that they discuss is regarding a NEW venture. In my previous posts on this blog I always enjoyed using real-life examples, and my readers seemed to appreciate this too. The reason is pretty simple, I was showing what I was learning, not just feeding them tips they had heard a million times before. I should make the point that I never ripped anyone else’s ideas or content, at least not intentionally - it’s just the nature of this niche…

I realize that the online venture posts for this blog haven’t been all that exciting yet, pretty much just saying ‘coming soon’. However, if it’s any conciliation besides the bubbling anticipation I’m as bored with the pre-launch stage as you are! When things should get more interesting is when the first of these projects launches, and then several more follow over the summer. Sure, if you’re a complete newbie to blogging you can go and read the basic tips found everywhere, but if you’re a webmaster who is serious about developing real life ventures, and trying new things then why not follow me as I document my successes (and failures) and blog about them every step of the way.

I won’t be giving up posts about promotion and marketing, but just making them a lot less general. How much better is ‘today we used (this cheap company) to produce 1000 flyers for our new website today, and got a fantastic traffic boost. Here are some other ways that we used offline marketing to boost our traffic by 200%!’ than ‘get links on other highly ranked blogs’. I’ve become a bit of a cynic when reading all the make-money blogs around today. They all just sound so impersonal and shallow. Even in writing this I’m joining a wave of ‘awakened’ bloggers who are moving past the make-money trend, and already my uniqueness is fading. However, enough cynicism…

I will be launching my Discover Unsigned website tomorrow (I know I said today, but I figured 1 days development delay is pretty acceptable), and I’m SO excited about it. I’m also still designing a lot for clients and loving that. My advice in closing would be to do what you really love. Never do anything focusing on the future goals and ignoring how you feel in the present. If you love earning $1 per day on Adsense then sure, go ahead and launch your make-money blog and join a million others. However, if you’re out to make millions and see the point up to this outcome as inconvenient or ‘just a big effort’ then don’t bother. I’m turning 20 soon, and perhaps this is a 1/4-life crisis, but life really is too short to sit around doing something that you don’t truly enjoy.

Enough of the rant, just look out for the Discover Unsigned launch tomorrow and check back soon to follow it’s progress, as well as all the efforts that I’m planning to pour into it.

- Tom.

Ok, so it has been quite a while since my last blog post… There are several reasons for this, so I thought I’d quickly explain what’s been going on in my life and what’s happening with Push Standards. Bear with me as I’m not sure how long this post will turn out to be.

My Life:

So first of all, what’s been happening in my life? Well I arrived back at University exactly a week ago, and had all 4 of my final deadlines in within the space of 5 days. To put this in perspective one deadline per week gets pretty hectic, and all of my friends have their deadlines spaced over months. It’s not even like I could have worked on these for ages, I got the same preparation time as everyone else, but it just worked out that my deadline timetable was a lot more stressful. Anyway, I won’t go on about it but just say that I made it through (just about) and have had a chance to relax for a couple of days at last.

The good news is that now I’m the only person who doesn’t have any deadlines, and can concentrate on the blog at least until my final exams (about 4 weeks time). I’ll still have lectures as per normal, but it will be no where near as stressful. This is why I haven’t been updating, I’ve just not had a spare minute. For most of this week I was working every hour that I wasn’t sleeping (so about 18 hours per day!).

Designing:

Despite these important deadlines I couldn’t drop design work for my clients and so have some new works to show for it. Luckily I managed to keep to deadlines, and can now pour myself into my designing more fully. I’ll be uploading new designs to my portfolio over the next few weeks, but here is a design I did a couple of weeks ago for CarArticles.co.uk:

You can see the launched website here.

Online Projects:

Despite being so busy I can never seem to turn off when it comes to my online projects. I still have a couple that are in the process of being developed, although these may have to wait until after my exams to be launched. One that will be coming before that is a project that I’m doing with a good friend of mine. He’s studying at music college and for one of his modules chose the coursework option to create a music-related website. He came to me to see if I might be interested and after a little brainstorming we came up with an idea for a music blog. He has a knack for discovering amazing bands that nobody has ever heard of (it’s how I discovered some of my favorites) and so we thought that we would simply run a blog that publicized these bands. It will be a useful resource for music lovers and also give unsigned bands a little promotion. Obviously it’s not anything revolutionary but we feel like their definitely a gap in the market for this kind of thing. If we can consistently update with great artists and use his offline marketing potential (at his college) then we think we could get things rolling nicely.

Another project of mine that you may remember me announcing on the blog is CssGalleryList.com. I just wanted to post an update about how the site is doing. After spending just $30 getting the site online it’s now pulling $1-$2 per day. Not very impressive sounding, but when you consider that this already values the site at over 1500% of it’s startup costs it’s not too bad. Also the great thing about this site is that it’s very static, I’ve not touched it since launch. I’ve also not promoted it or anything of that sort, so that’s $1-2 per day via word of mouth - people who like the site’s concept. When I have a spare couple of days I’m planning on maybe putting 10-20 hours into promoting the site heavily and then sit back and see it grow to the next level. I would like to see the site pulling $100 per month and then perhaps sell it for $1000 in a few months.

What about this blog?

The good news is that I most definitely will NOT be giving up on Push Standards. With all these upcoming projects, and some spare time on my hands I will be updating far more regularly. As always I appreciate your continued readership and thank you for sticking by the blog. I hope that you will check back shortly for new articles and info about my coming-soon websites.

Oh and if I’ve been bad about getting back to your email this post should explain why. My priority for my inbox this week was my design clients, but now I’ve got the time to respond to absolutely everybody.

Cheers,

- Tom.

In the world of blogging a few names spring to mind when considering a ‘blogging superhero’. In considering what makes a great blog post I thought that I would learn from the best, and use real life case-studies of some of the most popular blog posts that I’ve ever come across.

Shoemoney.com is a hugely popular blog aimed at the blogging/webmaster community. It has over 15,000 RSS subscribers and one of it’s most commented posts is: ‘My Top 10 Worst Ideas to Make Money’. The post basically goes over a few failed business ideas and why they didn’t work. Now, let’s look at just what made the post so popular:

“Then a very close friend of the family had a miscarriage about 15 weeks into her pregnancy and told us about how she had signed up for all these baby websites and now they keep emailing her stuff and she breaks down and cries every time…. I just wanted no part of that…”

One of the largest blogs in the world is ProBlogger.net (over 44,000 subscribers). One of their most popular posts is ‘How Bloggers Make Money From Blogs’. The article outlines the various methods that bloggers can use to make money, and received an incredible 523 comments. So what made this post so popular?

Finally, I’m going to look at a post from JohnChow.com, another hugely successful blog. The post I’ll be looking at is ‘Blog Income Report - February 2008′. Let’s see why it’s so popular…

I hope that you found this post helpful, and enjoyed reading about some of my favorite blog posts. Inspiring stuff for sure…