This month marks the two year anniversary of Inspired Money Maker.

The idea for this Blog came about during a period of time when I was being mentored/coached in Dr. Joe Vitale’s Executive Mentoring Program which was done in partnership with a company called Nitro Marketing.

One of the big challenges that I was working on with my coach at the time was having too many ideas for different online businesses, Blogs etc. and my tendency to get bored with projects easily and to jump from one exciting idea to the next without ever getting any of these ideas off the ground.

I remember when I started my coaching I had a few dozen different ideas and couldn’t decide which one to start with.

One of the things that my coach (Bryant) helped me realize was that by choosing an idea to start working with and launch, I didn’t have to commit to it for the rest of my life.

I think at the time I was having such a hard time getting any of my ideas off the ground because subconsciously I was fearing that I would get “stuck” with whichever idea I pick for the rest of my life.

When you’ve got 30 or 40 different ideas for businesses floating around in your head, it can be pretty scary to try to pick just one.

“What if I pick the wrong one?!” – was what I was thinking at the time.

My coach Bryant helped me out by saying something to the effect of “Paul, for our next session I want you to pick one of the ideas we’ve identified.  You’re not going to get married to it for the rest of your life.  You’re going to commit to it for a period of time, and then you can re-evaluate what you want to do then.  Pick an idea you are willing to commit to for a period of two years.  No more then that, otherwise you’ll have way too much anxiety.  We’re just talking about 2 years here.”

Two years seemed a heck of a lot easier to commit to than the rest of my life.

After a lot of soul searching, and looking through my brainstorming sheets that we did prior to this point, I looked through all the different ideas I had and picked Inspired Money Maker.

The original intent behind Inspired Money Maker was to create a Blog where I could explore and share my ideas about the mental, emotional and spiritual side of making money.

There are so many other resources out there that deal with finances from the logical, technical and mathematical point of view, such as investment strategies, debt reduction strategies, cash flow strategies etc., but I didn’t see a lot of websites/Blogs out there talking about the mindset of making money.

I made the decision to create a Blog that would cover such topics and so InspiredMoneyMaker.com was born.

Now, two years later I’ve written 341 posts, with a total of 389,010 words, averaging 14.2 posts per month during the 24 month period.  Assuming an average book size of about 75,000 words (~300) pages, that’s the equivalent of writing about 5 books!

My average post is 1,141 words and what I think is really cool is that my average comment is 336 words!  It’s so awesome to have meaningful comments and conversations with your readers, so thank you for that!

I’m very happy with the growth I’ve experienced as a writer and the many friends and connections I’ve made since starting this Blog just two years ago.

With the two year anniversary of this Blog here though, I’ve been thinking about where to take this Blog next.

Future Direction of Inspired Money Maker

Two years ago I was trying to figure out how I’m ever going to leave the corporate world behind and work for myself doing what I love.

Now, two years later I’ve been working on my own business for 10 months now and really enjoying it.

I’ve built up this Blog as well as a few other smaller Blogs, and also dove into building an affiliate marketing business as well.

A lot of things have changed and improved, which I’m very excited about.

However, the one challenge I have with this Blog is that I’ve run out of ways to basically say:

• Making money is a mindset.
• Embrace personal development.
• Affirmations and visualization works.  Stop dismissing it as “woo woo” stuff when you haven’t even tried using them.  I didn’t make this stuff up.  Study anyone who’s ever done anything worthwhile and you’ll see they use these tools.
• Law of Attraction works whether you believe in it or not.  Law of Attraction does not mean visualizing a Ferrari and then waiting for it to drop out of the sky.  Watching the trailer or even watching the movie “The Secret” doesn’t teach you LoA.  It just introduces you to some of it’s concepts.  There’s a lot more to it.
• There are many different ways to make money online as well.  Blogging and Affiliate Marketing are just a few I’ve chosen to pursue and I’ve demonstrated how either of those alone can help you make a full time income online, allowing you to leave your dead-end job.  But it all starts with mindset.
• Read, study and apply the concepts in “Think and Grow Rich”.
• Read, study and apply the concepts in “The Science of Getting Rich”.
• There are three pillars to making money.  Mindset.  Strategy.  Execution.  All three must be engaged to make money.  Read my free eBook for more details.

I mean there are countless different ways I can say all that, and countless more examples I could show of how I’ve applied these concepts to make money in my life, but lately I’ve been thinking about moving in a new direction.

I’m not totally sure yet where I want to go next, as I have so many different ideas, but there are a few things I’ve identified as possible criteria to help me with my decision:

(1) “Who can I help the most?” – I think I want to re-define who my perfect audience is.  So far I’ve been writing content that’s fairly broad, general and can be applied by almost anyone.  The challenge with this is that when you have a Blog who’s audience is “everyone”, it also means that you’re not really targeting “anyone” specifically.  I think if I really clearly define who I’m targeting with my Blog very specifically, I’ll be able to attract a lot more of that specific type of person and help them a lot more.

(2) “How can I offer more depth and value with my content?” – Another aspect of my Blog and the type of content I’ve been writing so far is that I tend to write about ideas, concepts and philosophies.  This is naturally how my brain thinks as well.  When I read books, research and study topics I am more interested in the ideas, concepts, and philosophies behind the topics than a specific application of that topic.

For example, when I studied my advanced nutrition courses I wanted to understand things like Vitamins – what they are, how they work, what they do in the body, the difference between water soluble and fat soluble vitamins, the effects of vitamin deficiency and vitamin overdose.  I wanted to understand what kinds of foods are rich in vitamins and which kinds of foods are poor sources of vitamins.  I wanted to understand the difference between natural vitamins and synthetic vitamins.

Why?  I don’t know.  My brain is crazy like that.  I love to understand the “Why” behind things and to understand how things work.

See, for me it’s more important to understand things like that, then for someone to just tell me “Take 500mg of Vitamin C because it’s good for you.”  By understanding the ideas, concepts and philosophies of a topic I can deduce my own practical applications of those topics very specifically to my personal situation.

When I have a cold, I can take two or more 500mg Vitamin C capsules because I understand what Vitamin C does in the body and I also know that it’s a water soluble Vitamin so taking an extra dose isn’t going to hurt me.  Worst case my body will just excrete any excess Vitamin C in my urine.  You can’t do that with fat soluble Vitamins however.

The thing is though that a lot of people don’t have the time or desire to learn the ideas, concepts and philosophies behind topics.  A lot of people just want “the answers” to their problems.  They don’t want to have to deduce the practical steps of applying a concept – they want it to be spelled out for them.

In some areas of my life I’m totally like that as well, so I understand the need for that kind of content.

I’ve been thinking that perhaps it would be more valuable to my new audience if I covered more specific examples and practical tips and steps of applying ideas instead of teaching the ideas themselves.

This would also allow me to get more in depth with my topics without overwhelming my audience with super long posts.

(3) “How can I build a community around this?” – Another thing I’d like to do is to build a community around the topic I’ll be covering so that communication can also begin to happen between members of the community as well, not just between myself and my readers.

This may entail setting up a forum or some form of membership site etc.

(4) “How else can I help my audience?” – The other thing I’ve been thinking about is creating more product-based content, such as audio’s, video’s, home study courses etc.  Basically premium content that may require more production costs on my part, compared to writing a Blog post, but that will help provide more value to my audience than they would ever get out of just reading a variety of Blog posts.

Those are some of the main questions I’ve been working through.

As far as more specific topic ideas, I’m still not sure which direction I want to go in, but a few ideas I’ve had are:

• Small / Home Based Business Marketing Concepts – Helping small and home based businesses, such as for example Reiki Practitioners, Chiropractors, Dentists, Psychics, Small Restaurant Owners, Naturopaths, Niche Bookstores, etc. to more effectively use the Internet to market their services and to build their client base.In the past 6 months or so, I have connected with many such people who offer amazing products and services but frankly they know very little about using the Internet to market their services.  Marketing is a topic I have a lot of interest in, and my experience with both traditional and Internet based marketing can be a great asset to many of these people.This would actually kind of be a natural extension to the Inspired Money Maker concept, as many people who originally started reading my Blog two years ago have now figured out what they love to do and perhaps even started their own businesses, but they’re struggling right now because they don’t quite know how to market themselves effectively yet.
• More Advanced Law of Attraction / Spiritual / Paranormal Stuff – This would entail diving into a lot more advanced “woo woo” stuff which I know would turn off a certain percentage of my readers who aren’t into “woo woo” stuff, while at the same time attracting a whole bunch more “woo woo” lovers. So far a lot of what I’ve learned about this stuff has stemmed mostly from it’s applications in terms of business and making money, but I still think I haven’t scratched the surface of it yet.
• A Blog About Nothing – The other path I was considering was not to define a topic at all, but just write about random stuff that happens in my life.  This would kind of be more of just documenting my journey of Blogging, making money online, the silly crap my dogs do, cool sites and articles I’ve come across, books I’m reading etc.  The purpose would be more to just inspire others to drop their dead end jobs and find their true passion in life and go after it.This would definitely be the easiest path to take, but I think with all the Facebook and Twitter type sites available out there, people are very quickly losing interest in what other people are doing.  Yeah, they’ll look at a picture you post if it’s extraordinary in some way, but outside of that who really cares what I did today?  Although, there are a number of Bloggers out there who are very successful doing just that.  I guess the allure of making money online and living a “dot com” lifestyle is pretty strong.
• Something Totally Different – I have a few other ideas for totally different topics as well…

I’d love to hear what you guys and gals think about what I’ve written above and which direction you would like to see this Blog go?

How can I help you the most?  What topic would be the most beneficial to your life?

The other option of course would be keep the blog as-is, and perhaps bring on other writers to keep writing on the topic of the mindset of making money (online and offline) and just start another Blog on my new topic.  Or perhaps even sell this Blog to someone else who has a lot to say on this topic and start another one.

Whatever direction things end up going in, I’m very excited because I think the “new” Blog or “new direction” of this Blog is going to take things to a new level.