The first course that I have planned, tentatively titled “A Course In Financial Freedom” is coming along nicely. The course is currently divided into ten sections, and I’m part way through section three. Considering that I only have a few hours a week to work on it, and I’ve already rewritten entire sections, I wouldn’t consider my progress so far to be horrible. But at the same time, it’s painstakingly slow, and the course itself is going to be a lot bigger than I had previously anticipated.

Doing this has shown me a very stark contrast between just posting blog entries and having real, meaningful content that you can apply even to your own life. It’s interesting how teaching something can actually help you to be learn it. Just as an example, one of the concepts in the course that I can apply to my own life is termed the ‘Freedom Factor’. This factor gives me a meaningful yard stick that I can chart my own financial freedom progress with. So in a sense, thinking about this course and writing it is actually giving me a better idea of how to achieve the goal of financial freedom in my own life.

Providing ‘real content’, as I’m beginning to refer to it as, is also a lot more time consuming and difficult than just writing down blog entries. You have to organize it, word it correctly, and present it in a way that can be understood and applied the easiest in the reader’s life. It’s not just a simple matter of writing down your thoughts anymore.

My classes are over in mid June, so that should clear up some more time that I can spend on the site, among other things. Now that I really have the mission defined, I can really start plowing time into the site itself, instead of thinking about what direction I want to go in.

Take care,

It seems that I’m finally narrowing down on exactly what it is that I’m trying to accomplish with this site, how it relates to me, and how it relates to other people.

If you’ve been to the main web site recently, you’ll probably notice a new and simplistic design there, along with another new direction for the site. I’m eliminating the fluff, and going in a new direction in the site which is more in alignment with my general direction in life.

The site will now be divided into two parts. A primary mission, and a secondary mission. The primary mission will be one of teaching. It will contain a variety of practical, no nonsense courses and exercises designed to fulfill the goal of giving people in general a better lifestyle. I feel that this approach will be the most beneficial to people in general. Based upon studying other sites and the most popular posts from my own site, I believe that this is also what people are really looking for.

In other words, I don’t think someone is so interested in my own experience and opinions on matters. Filling the Internet with more useless personal drivel is not going to move anyone into a forward direction, myself included.

What is required are practical applications and knowledge that can be applied in one’s own life. As a writer, I’m no longer so much interested in my own life and opinions. Instead, I am more interested in encouraging the reader to take practical steps to improve life in general. The focus is removed from myself, and is placed on the reader.

The secondary mission of the site will be this blog. The blog will still give me an opportunity to express pretty much anything that I want to express. The blog will also give the reader the opportunity to get to know the guy behind the words, so to speak. I have no intention of being some anonymous, fly by night kind of person. The world requires openness, and I intend on being open.

I have a lot more faith in this new direction than I did in the previous one. With my old web site design, layout, and direction, I almost knew that it was bound to fail. In fact, I even expected it to ‘fail’, as I pointed out in my first post.

Something else that I’ve learned from this experience so far is the value of relationships. Ultimately, being a writer, or a reader, is about being in a relationship. Sure, it may not exist in person. You may never meet. But the words that you write, and the audience that reads them, is still in a kind of relationship with one another. Albeit, a fairly impersonal one.

Whenever you are growing an audience, whenever you are increasing the traffic to your web site, what you are really doing is forming new relationships with people. Like most normal relationships, if it is beneficial for the reader, then the reader will stay. If it is not beneficial to the reader, then the reader will leave, or simply forget about your material and/or web site.

Since I have a pretty clear direction and focus for the site now, the goal of growing an audience, increasing web traffic, and forming new relationships is…going to actually become one of my goals.

I’m already working on the first ‘course’ as we speak. Of course, writing a whole course on certain subject or focus is going to take a while. It’s a lot different than writing mindless drivel about ideal situations.