Each month feels like another month of rapid progress. July is no exception. In fact, it’s crazy to think July has already ended.
July 2016 Summary
I interviewed more people for my podcast. I plan on launching it in August. I promise you’ll love the episodes.
My family went up to Boston twice to watch the Red Sox play ball. We saw the team win two games and lose two games.
My brother and I hosted our Teenager Entrepreneur bootcamp which is always a blast. For those of you who don’t know, my brother and I empower teens with the knowledge they need to build successful businesses based on their passions.
That’s the Teenager Entrepreneur bootcamp in a nutshell.
I won the People’s Choice Rule Breaker Award back in 2014, and now I’m ready to win another Rule Breaker Award in 2016. I am a rule breaker because I started my business in middle school.
If you want me to win the award, please vote for me here.
Here’s what else happened this month:
Content Creation Calendar
I have read several books this month (more on that later) and structuring a content creation calendar got mentioned in several of those books. So I decided to structure my own content creation calendar.
It’s one of the better decisions I have made regarding my content. If I have all of my content creation calendars in front of me, and you wanted to know what I’ll do on December 13, 2016, I could tell you.
I considered taking a picture of one of my content creation calendars but it’s got several of my future content ideas on it. I would rather write out the content first. If I remember, I’ll include the August 2016 Content Creation Calendar within that Performance Report.
The Content Creation Calendar made it possible for me to identify themes I need to focus on and how I can manage to produce a new piece of content every day. I was great at that in the past. But that became more difficult as I wrote longer blog posts.
My Battle With Amazon
About 1-2 weeks ago, I sent an email to my list detailing my struggle with Amazon. The struggle many Kindle authors face is that Amazon doesn’t allow you to sell your Kindle books for free. $0.99 is the minimum price you must charge for your Kindle book.
So why are some Kindle books free?
The answer is that there’s a workaround. If you publish your book on Smashwords for free and get the premium status in Smashwords, Amazon is more likely to listen. Publishing your book on Smashwords isn’t good enough without the premium status.
I plan on getting the premium status on Smashwords soon. I haven’t gotten to it due to a lack of time. Then I am sure Amazon will change the price.
The interesting thing about this Kindle book is that it actually made four sales. The only time I promoted it to my audience, I told them to not buy the book because the entire book is me copying and pasting one of my blog posts.
But four sales got my attention. While I didn’t want this particular Kindle book to make sales (it’s one of my blog posts and I only make $0.35 per sale), I see potential.
The next time I turn one of my blog posts into a book, I’ll add additional content so I feel better charging $0.99 for that Kindle book. It’s just unnecessarily hard to make a Kindle book free on Amazon. For now, having one Permafree Kindle book is fine with me.
Problems With Udemy
One of my goals from the June 2016 Monthly Performance Report was to create more Udemy courses. The entire thinking was that since Udemy is changing and fewer people want to create courses, now is the perfect time to jump in.
Since then my opinion has changed. I’m not as focused as I once was to create more training courses. Udemy’s pricing policy and rule to hide certain courses with an insufficient average rating from their search engine didn’t go well with me.
For instance, my free course Guest Blogging Your Way To Ultimate Visibility and Traffic was removed from Udemy’s search engine.
Udemy said that if a course averages below 4.10 stars in its recent reviews, it gets yanked from the search engine. The last 10 reviewers averaged 3.85 stars which means I was .25 stars away from not having any problems.
Combine that with the fact that the course’s all-time star average is exactly 4.10 stars, I’m not pleased. Udemy is continuing to change, and most of the changes aren’t looking good so far.
All of the income I make from Udemy is now passive. I haven’t updated a course there for a while. But I’m not giving up on training course creation. Enter TSMD.
Total Social Media Domination — TSMD
TSMD is one of the most ambitious projects I am currently pursuing. TSMD will be a membership site that consistently gets updated with new videos on how to dominate social media.
I don’t know all of the details yet, but I know I’ll include a FB group for members to chat and ask me their questions.
The plan is to commit at least three hours of my time to building TSMD every single day until its completion. That way, I can finish the whole membership site before the end of summer. Adding monthly updates will be much easier in comparison.
For those of you interested, I plan on having an affiliate program for the membership site with a recurring commission for each member you refer.
Unlock Your Potential
Speaking of projects, I’m also working on a new book. The book will be called Unlock Your Potential. Right now the manuscript is over 10,000 words long. I aim to get the manuscript to 30,000 to 60,000 words by the end of August.
This book will be a manifesto. I’ll reveal what has driven me so far and how you can achieve significant results in your life. This isn’t just going to be any personal development book. It’s going to be one of the best if not the best personal development book out there.
I’m pursuing a publisher for this book so my book can reach the hands of more readers. I dream of being able to find this book in Barnes & Noble.
I’m Intensifying My YouTube Efforts
I can’t show a picture of my content creation calendar, but I can give you an idea of the work involved. Every week, I am uploading a minimum of four new videos to YouTube.
#1: Videos For Teenage Entrepreneur Series on Mondays — These videos are specifically aimed towards providing teens with the knowledge they need to crush it in business and life.
#2: Misc videos on Tuesdays — Anything from social media marketing to productivity, but I keep these videos within my niche.
#3: Podcast videos on Wednesday — I will redistribute all of my MP3 files into YouTube videos with my podcast’s channel art. Why not?
#4: Q&A videos on Saturdays — I am answering one question every week. Have a question for me? I’ll answer it in a video and promote you at the same time!
My goal is to eventually publish one new YouTube video every day. The focus in August is to get comfortable with publishing four videos every week. I want to feel comfortable taking that type of action so it’s an easy transition during college.
Books I Read
I read a lot of books this month largely due to traveling back and forth from New York to Boston…twice.
1. The 10X Rule
3. Will The Real You Please Stand Up
As you can see, I am reading books in three specific areas. Content marketing, podcasting, and personal development.
After my interview with Aaron Walker, I learned that reading personal development books won’t just help you become a better person. Personal development books help you become successful in all areas of your life…including your business.
If you could only read one of these books, I’d recommend The 10X Rule hands down. It’s a personal development book that is all about achieving success. These rules apply regardless of what niche you are in.
One cool stat from The 10X Rule is that most workers read one book every year while most CEOs read 60 books every year. That stat reveals how important it is to read books.
One of my goals is to listen to at least five audiobooks each month. This goal has been easy for me in the summer due to traveling. In school, that goal will get more challenging, but I am determined to pull it off.
Blog Posts I Wrote
If you missed the blog posts I wrote in July and want to read them, I have included them here as a reference. I published a bunch of YouTube videos too which can be found on my channel.
5 Ways To Use SnapChat For Business: The new social network is growing as the days go by. Now is the perfect time to start using the revolutionary social network for your business. In this blog post, I’ll reveal how I use SnapChat for my business and how you can do the same.
3 Ways To Fit Something Into Your Budget: When businesses find themselves at their maximum budget, these are the methods they can use to find more room within their budgets.
10 Tactics To Get High Quality Backlinks: Backlinks are very important for SEO. In this article, you’ll learn some of the best tactics you can use to build a quality backlink empire.
How To Write A Ridiculously Long Blog Post: Some of my blog posts are over 5,000 words which is great for SEO. You’ll learn the mindset I approach these blog psots with so I can go from an idea to 5,000+ words.
5 Power Tips To Get More Done: Want to accomplish more in your lifetime? This blog post reveals how you can do just that.
Looking Back At June
I already went in-depth about Udemy, so I won’t mention that here.
I still haven’t created a new landing page yet. TSMD will force me to create several landing pages so I’m happy about that. I won’t consider creating another landing page until I complete TSMD.
I technically published a new Kindle book although making it permafree will be the next goal. What interests me is that the book has already resulted in two new subscribers. Making the book free would put it in front of more people, and as a result, grow my email list.
I am still not averaging 1,000 daily visitors for my blog yet, but I did make significant progress. I finally have a solid plan of attack for producing content. By the end of August, I’ll be in the groove of publishing one new piece of content for this blog every day.
Part of that plan is having contributors, so if you would like to contribute a blog post to my blog, you can go here for the details. I have two people working for me to get more contributors.
I honestly thought I would have interviewed more people for my podcast. I only interviewed five people this month but I largely attribute that to travel and the Teenager Entrepreneur bootcamp.
I had an absolute blast during those five interviews and am sure you’ll enjoy them too.
August Goals
I normally called this section the “Highlights” section, but “Goals” seems more appropriate. These are some of my goals for August:
#1: Launch The Podcast
For the past two months, I’ve told my audience about all of the awesome people who I have interviewed. The podcast is finally going to see the light of day. On my content calendar, I have already designated August 24th as the day the first podcast episode goes live.
There’s still much to do but the heavy lifting is over with. The most challenging part was committing to having guests and then interviewing the first few guests. It’s been a breeze since then.
#2: Complete TSMD
I will work on this membership site for at least three hours every day until its completion. I am excited about this membership site and all that I will offer on it.
I’m so excited about it that I am even working on merchandise. I am finalizing some of the shirts on Zazzle now.
Below the social media logo are the words “Total Social Media Domination” and “@MarcGuberti.”
All of those shirts will be available to the public soon enough, and you better believe I’m wearing those shirts during my future YouTube videos.
#3: Get 1,000 Daily Visitors For My Blog
This will remain one of my goals until I accomplish it. July was the planning phase and August is the month in which I execute that plan. I am more focused on the podcast and TSMD, but any extra time I have will get allocated towards this goal.
#4: Increase My Affiliate Marketing Revenue
I have made several changes to my blog with affiliate marketing in mind. A while ago, I added a resources page to my blog with some of the online tools that I recommend.
All of the links are affiliate links, and I have no problem with making money promoting a tool that I would have recommend anyway.
I have gone through all of my blog posts and included affiliate links at any reference of HootSuite, Optimize Press, ManageFlitter, or any of the other tools that I use.
The moment I publish my podcast, I’m pursuing Audible’s podcasting affiliate program. That will be a lot of fun since I read all of my books on Audible and can therefore promote it very well.
I’ll never promote a product as an affiliate unless I like the product and am proud to stand behind it.
In Conclusion
In all of the years I’ve been a blogger, I have always explored new opportunities and achieved the best results during the summer. Summer is coming to an end.
But I’m not walking out quietly. In a span of the next 30 days, I’ll launch a membership site and a podcast. I’ll be increasing the number of emails I send each month which means I’ll be switching over to ConvertKit very soon (there’s no limit in monthly emails).
Thank you for reading my month in review. I hope you enjoyed it.
And please don’t forget to vote for me to receive the Rule Breaker Award.
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