I’ve decided to completely re-vamp my whole blog and blogging strategy.

As I mentioned earlier this month, I want to get back to the fundamentals of making money online. Making some major improvements to my blog is going to be a big part of that strategy.

Here are some changes that I’m planning on making to Paulymath.com in the very near future.

Better Blog Design

One of the first things you’ll notice soon is a completely new re-design of Paulymath.com.

My current Blog design was originally created by Unique Blog Designs just over two years ago. I’ve made some tweaks to it over the years, but there are now some fundamental changes that I want to make to the design and a band-aid solution isn’t going to work.

I need a total blog theme re-design.

One of the main things I want to change about my design is that I want to change it to be more of a “magazine style” look where my home page shows more of my latest posts, and not just excerpts of the last five that I’ve written.

I want to have the ability to show featured posts, and to quickly highlight at least ten of my latest posts with some content snippets so people can decide whether they want to read the post or not.

Part of the reason I want to do this is because Paulymath.com is not a single topic Blog.  As a polymath / scanner, I write on a variety of topics and sometimes people are not really interested in reading about all the topics.

For example, some people who come here for affiliate marketing related content might have no interest in spirituality related posts and vice versa. By showing at least ten of my latest posts, people will be able to choose which posts they are interested in and skip the others.

This change will also work hand-in-hand with my plans to significantly increase my posting frequency.

To get this design done I started off with a mock-up that I did myself in Photoshop.  I then hired an outsourced designer to come up with the design I wanted.  Unfortunately, the designer I hired only understood part of my vision and after about 8 hours of work he put into it I decided to take over myself.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t be wasting my time doing work that I could outsource to others, but I wasn’t very successful finding a good quality designer at a reasonable price who would understand my vision for my new Blog design.  The challenge is that it is hard to communicate exactly what I want unless I’m watching what the designer is doing as he’s doing it.

Anyway, after about 8 hours of outsource design work, I decided to take over the file and complete the details of the Photoshop design file myself. I’m a bit of a Photoshop ninja myself so it was a lot easier for me to design it myself than to tell someone else what I want and then go back and forth with different revisions.

Once I got the design done I hired a WordPress theme designer who knows how to take a Photoshop design file and convert it into a workable WordPress theme.  I handed the design over to him about a week ago and he’s working on putting the finishing touches on it now.  I’m sure once I see the theme installed with my content attached to it, I’ll want to make additional tweaks and changes, but I’m really excited to see how it turns out.

Mascot Redesign

Back in February I wrote a post asking if people would be willing to donate money to add my puppy Zoe into my mascot design. I did this mostly as just a fun thing to see if people would actually be willing to donate money to my puppy Zoe.

Her cuteness melted the hearts of 12 sponsors so far and we’ve raised $103 so far in donations. We’re still looking to raise another $197 if anyone’s interested in donating. I have once again hired the super talented mascot artist, Lucas Savelli, to re-design the new mascot. The new mascot design is going to be a much bigger part of the blog theme and I’m really excited to see it finished.

Lucas has completed the first stage of the design process which is getting the pencil sketches done and has now moved into the inking and coloring stage. I can’t wait to see the new design.

More Blog Content More Often

Another thing that I’m planning on doing is producing a lot more content for my Blog. That is another reason I wanted to get my theme re-designed to a magazine style theme so that I could pump out more content more often while still giving people who visit my home page a chance to keep up to date with the content.

I know some people read posts using an RSS reader, which keeps things organized but I think a lot of people still read blogs by visiting their home page, so I want to offer a convenient and fast way to see all the latest content on a single page and then readers can choose what to read. Of course, anyone who prefers the current way of just seeing the whole Blog post in reverse chronological order can still visit the Blog page itself.

Hiring a Virtual Assistant

One thing I realized about producing content is that I spend way too much time doing editing and “prettifying” of my Blog posts. Meaning, I may spend 1-2 hours working on a post, but really the content writing of that might only take me about 30 minutes, and then I always end up spending another 30-90 minutes editing, making the content look better, searching for photos, editing photos etc. to add into the content.

I’ve hired a virtual assistant who’s going to be helping me out with that. By delegating the editing and “prettifying” work to my assistant, I’ll be able to produce more content more often. This is one of the first steps I’m taking to systemize, automate and outsource everything that isn’t the best use of my valuable time.

SEO Optimization

Another thing I’ve been working feverishly on is learning all about WordPress SEO and search engine optimization in general. Learning all about SEO is one of my goals for this year, so I want to apply what I learn to grow this blog as well.

I’ve already learned so much in the last few months, but I still feel like a total noob compared to some of the really sharp SEO guys out there. I definitely realize now that there are a lot of improvements I can do with this blog to make it more search engine friendly and to attract more traffic to the site.

Blog Growth Case Study

Ever since I used to do my Blog income reports way back in the spring and summer of 2008, I’ve always thought about getting back to doing regular traffic and income growth reports on my Blog.

I remember in those days every blogger out there was doing them and I think they inspired a lot of people. However, since those days the advertising dollars in the Blogosphere have died down and a lot of people are hiding their numbers as it’s a lot less fun reporting numbers that are shrinking instead of growing.

My Blog income has significantly dropped as well, but not for the same reasons as most others. Most of the drop in my numbers has happened because I’ve been putting most of my energy this year on “one-on-one” type work such as consulting and coaching, and most of 2009 was spent on PPC affiliate marketing.

Even though my Blog readership has grown by leaps and bounds throughout 2009 and so far in 2010, it wasn’t due to a focused effort on my part. For the past 18 months or so I haven’t really been blogging to grow my traffic or to make money. I’ve mostly been blogging because I enjoy it – and only when I felt inspired and not lazy.

Most of my traffic optimization and monetization work happened in 2008 when I was learning how to make money with a blog and in 2009 and 2010 I’ve just benefited from the momentum I built back in 2008.

Well, it’s time to dive back into traffic growth and the monetization side of things again and put some energy behind this blog. I’m actually really excited about this, and wanted to ask you guys how much interest you’d have in me documenting my progress along the way.

I’ve been thinking about documenting all the changes and improvements I’ll be making to the Blog and then reporting my traffic numbers and generating income reports as well – regardless whether they go up or down.

Would a “How to Make Money Blogging in 2010” type case study like this be useful to you guys or do you already know exactly what it takes from the other case studies other bloggers have published?

If that is something that would be useful and beneficial, I might do monthly or possibly even weekly updates to keep you guys up to date with how things are going. I haven’t tracked my numbers in any detail for quite some time now, but just to give you a rough idea I would estimate that I’m currently making less than $300/month from this Blog.

I know that number is not very high, and I know most Bloggers in my position wouldn’t reveal such a low number but I have nothing to hide.  In fact, because my numbers are so low right now, I think a case study could be fun, and at the same time educational/inspirational, showing me grow that number into something a lot more sizeable and more inspiring.

Unlike my previous income reports though, I was thinking of keeping any consulting or coaching figures completely out of these income reports even if the work I generate comes directly from the Blog. I was thinking of just reporting the more “passive” forms of blog income like advertising and affiliate commissions.

I would also keep any kind of affiliate income I generate separate from these reports unless it was generated on this Blog.

Who’s interested in such a case study? And would you prefer weekly or monthly updates?

Maybe by doing this I can inspire some of the other Bloggers out there who used to report their income to start doing that again, because I think overall it had a very positive influence on the community.  I mean, if it wasn’t for Steve Pavlina having the courage to share his income numbers way back in 2006 when he was just getting going, it’s quite possible I would have never realized that it’s possible to make money as a Blogger.

I hate to think where I’d be if that was the case.