It's been a long time since any real changes have been made at CYT and over the last month or so I have been looking at implementing some changes.
CYT has grown from a subscriber base of 3,000 last August to nearly 13,000 today. I have focused on getting more subscribers to the blog and it's worked. Now it's time to make the blog a little more interesting for the readers who visit and all the new subscribers, and to add more value.
Here are a few changes which will be more over the next month:
Design
I have hired a great guy to redesign the blog and he is working on it just now and it should be ready in the next few weeks. It will still be working on the Thesis framework, so it's just the skin that will change. I am quite excited about this as I haven't really done anything with the overall design, I recognised I am not a designer so I have hired one of the best designers to do this.
There's also some cleaning up to do with redirects for pages that no longer exist and to re-categorise all the articles, this will happen over the next few months.
I like the white colour of the blog, but it's a bit too cold with the blue colours so am looking to change to brown based colours and make it stand out from the crowd a little more.
Business
Since selling a few of my other websites this year, income from my online activities have dropped to around $350 per month. So I have been looking at the business side of blogging in a lot more detail and believe my best strategy is to keep writing guides that will provide great value.
CYT Guides
I have a new site coming out at www.cytguides.com (nowhere near finished yet, but will be by the end of September). This new site will be the site where I am offering all my current guides: 'Lucid Dreaming: Living in Your Dreams'and 'How to Make True Friends'as well as two new guides: 'How to reach 10,000 Blog Subscribers'and a new one coming out 'How to Become an Advanced Early Riser: Getting 5 Hours Sleep and Feeling Fantastic'. The first 3 guides will be a flat $10 and the guide 'How to Become an Advanced early Riser….' will be on offer at the end of September priced at $29 and $39 depending on the version you buy.
'How to Become an Advanced Early Riser: Getting 5 Hours Sleep and Feeling Fantastic' is something I have been working on over the last month. If you are interested in looking at the first draft and helping with editing please let me know (it's only the content you'll be looking at and giving feedback and editing, as the design has not been completed yet). I will choose 5 people if there is enough demand to help with this. Obviously editors will get a copy of the guide when it's been completed.
I am stepping things up on the business side and want to bring more value, at the same time making the guides accessible to everyone.
As you know the Alter Your Jacket video program didn't work out too well so I have gone back to basics and concentrated on the writing, instead of doing videos. The new guide on becoming an advanced early riser was a choice made by over 250 readers who responded to an email I sent about the type of book they would like to see written. Subscribers to the blog will get a 50% discount, 1 week before the main launch of the guide.
I will also be sending out an email inviting bloggers to become an affiliate for the launch in the next few weeks. If you are a blogger interested in becoming an affiliate please contact me.
Coaching
I will continue with the coaching side of things but am looking to get more ' blog coaching ' clients and will be promoting this more over the next few months. When the CYT guides take off I will expand this to ebook Coaching as well.
Advertising
I will continue to promote my own products as well as a few select affiliate products, but want to keep this to a bare minimum as i don't want it detracting from the main aim of the blog, which is to show readers how to change their lives.
Guest posts
I am looking at changing the guest post scheduling from once per week to twice per week. Currently I have guest posts lined up until the end of November.
If you would like to contribute an article you can do so by sending in an article, that has not been published elsewhere, and putting it into html format and sending it in a .txt file.
Unfortunately I cannot accept guest posts from everyone. If you are a personal development blogger or are blogger in a similar field then please send in an article.
Unfortunately due to time constraints I cannot give feedback on your articles, if they are not accepted.
So, from the beginning of October CYT will be publishing 4 articles per week instead of the current 3 articles on a: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday (Guest posts will be on a Wednesday and Saturday)
Forum
I currently have a forum at stevenaitchison.ning.com and I have not had the time to do much with it, but am looking to change that at the end of the year, but this will depend on time.
Your feedback
I am immensely grateful for all the help from readers and friends and value your thoughts more than you know.
If you have anything you'd like to see or have suggestions or feedback please let me know by commenting or writing to me
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