STEP 1:
You should use your monthly statement to find out the breakdown of your mortgage payment. Firstly take a look at the principal payment that shows the portion that you pay each month of your actual original debt. Then the interest payment represents the fee you pay for borrowing the principal.

STEP 2:
At the start of your mortgage, the monthly payments will mostly be paying off the  interest. As the mortgage matures, you will be paying off larger chunks of the principal amount. It is the paying off of the principal amount that is the key to erasing your debt. You can speed this process up by voluntarily increasing your principal payments.

STEP 3:
Once you can see that overpayments are key to reducing your mortgage quickly, plan out what you can afford. To do this, add up your regular payments and build a chart of what goes out compared to what comes in. Ensure that they don’t use your allocated money to pay interest. Applying it to principal amount instead is more effective. This should be your main goal.

Long time no blog, sorry.

I have been following the events going on at the blogging experiment site. Once owned by a make money online ‘noob’, and recently bought out by an experienced blogger and web entrapeneur Max Davis. Max is an excellent blogger in my opinion and goes massively in depth as to how he buys and sells websites and makes great money doing it. I urge you to take a look at the last load of entries on the site if you are looking at making money selling your blog.

One article that really caught my eye was on building niche afiliate stores. Max goes through his trial period stages in a very smart little video and explains how although the amounts aren’t huge, the process can be scaled up enormously. Check it out, the affiliate sites are a fantastic way of generating residual income.

I was just reading a blog article by Max Davis on the best type of web business to start. He makes a really interesting observation about ‘content websites’ which is essentially what this is.

The positives are that these kind of sites are very easy to start, which they are. The nagatives are that you need to put a lot of effort in with very little reward at the start. That is until you reach the ‘hump’.

What’s the hump?
The hump seems to be the point at which your blog receives the level of readers and subscribers that you need to be attracting to get the monetised revenue you need. As you’ll notice, i’ve added a feedburner rss subscription to the site which reveals (as I write this) that I have nil subscribers at the moment. Please feel free to subsribe if you feel you’d like to support me in my endeavor to pay my mortgage blogging.

Anyway… the hump can be reached and has been reached by some very successfull bloggers that have put hard work and determination into blogging. Many will try and get there and finish due to the lack of commitment. So I ask you to support me as I get stuck in and try and bring you the best information in making money blogging and get to ‘the hump’. Thanks.

I went out for a family day today to the park and zoo. To my surprise they had a huge Thomas the tank engine area which my girl loves. So being the sad blogger that I am, I decided to work out the attraction of Thomas and how that relates to successful blogging.

Consistency
We’ve seen Thomas  about 5 times in the past year at various  parks and train stations. Each time, he’s the same, with the same friends and the same fat controller. Kids love the consistency and guess what, we all need that as well. If you visit the blogs of bloggers like Problogger, Max Davis and Dosh Dosh, you’ll notice that these guys are constantly producing quality content. You know where you are with them and you know that if you spend some time on those blogs you will learn a great deal.

Why is this important?
That’s a good question. I believe that in a world of inconsistency and mass media being pushed in your face, consistency actually gains momentum because that’s what we really like.

So how can I blog like Thomas would?
1. Choose your blog  topic well, make it something you enjoy and write quality content that people will want to read. Check out the guys I mentioned earlier and see how they do it.

2. Be known as someone who consistently provides quality comments on other people’s blogs.

3. Be visually consistent as well. One of the best examples is dosh dosh. His main page has the same layout for each blog post. Themed pictures and a strong colour scheme give it a very professional and friendly appeal. However, you will need to judge your blog style on the topic you choose.

Hope that’s useful.

Hopefully, you’ve come to this blog because you are looking at extra ways to create income so that you can pay off your mortgage quicker. This one is for the artists out there amongst you.

I found a great site today called Big Cartel. The site is great for setting up a test shop to see if people like your art, or music, or clothing range. For the more arty among you, i’d recommend trying it to give you an income from selling your art.

Just to show you how quickly you can put one together, here’s my attempt at selling a canvas. I painted this about a few months ago. I create my art under the name ‘breadlegs’ by the way, just in case you wondered what that is all about. Please send me your attempts if you have a go.

You’ll find a lot of self help people that will tell you getting up as early aspossible is a good thing. your blogging productivity increases and you get to enjoy that special time that not many people see. 5pm.

However, I came accross this phenominal blog this morning that begs to differ and suggests that for some of us bloggers that aren’t naturally early risers and we could be damaging ourselves. Also that feeling of ‘increased time’ could also just be an illusion. SO go and take a look at the growing life blog and see for yourself. I recommend checking out a few articles on there, it’s a great blog.

By the way, what time are you reading this?

I was reading a great article by Steve Pavlina on how to build a high traffic website. One thing that really struck me was his thoughts on creating timeless content. If you want to atttract a lot of visitors then it’s probably best to create content that will be relevant one, two, or even ten years from now. Especially if you are in this for the long haul.

This will help you keep focussed on your key message and not take a shot at getting ranked for what Kylie is wearing this week. Unless of coursem Kylie is your chosen niche area. In the grand scheme of things, your timeless content will be visited time and time again.

Problogger is a fantastic advocate of timeless content. He has a whole section of timeless information blogging for beginners. So have a think next time you post a blog, what value will it have one year from now?

In this fast paced internet world, people still appreciate the significance of having their name used. Names are powerful and important, and this is also true of your blog. Once you’ve developed your blog, your name sticks with you, so you better choose a good one.

So how do you choose the right name?

Here’s a quick guideline for creating the best name:

Think about your topic and your audience
It makes sense that the topic of the Blog should be considered in the title. What will your target audience be expecting, and what will they remember? Problogger.com for example does exactly what it says on the tin.

Using your name?
Maybe you are a solo blogger, or a famous blogger. Guys like John Chow and Guy Kawasaki use their personal brand effectively on their blogs.

Go for the memorable
With mine, i’ve tried to be a little odd by stating that I intent to pay my mortgage with money earned. A little strange, but hopefully memorable. Another I like is doshdosh.com

Tom Collinson provides an extensive list of ideas around your domain name here.

Ok, we’ve realised now that this blogging for money is not a simple task. Many start, but many many will not finish the race. So how do we keep going to get the results that we started out wanting from blogging?

You need enthusiasm. Enthusiasm drives you when normally you wouldn’t carry on, and let’s face it, blogging for money is a hard slog. Mark McGuinnes tells us how to tap into a well of enthusiasm in his excellent coaching blog.

He suggests that the starting point is curiosity. Just like stripping away wallpaper you sometimes get those small tags that when you peel them get bigger and bigger into a large satisfactory piece. It was like that when I started blogging. I investigated a little bit, learnt a bit, investigated a bit more and suddenly this narnia-esqe world opened up.

So what’s your ‘tag’? I urge you to get curious today. Oh, and don’t forget to go and read the other 6 ways of getting enthusiastic.

Well that’s the plan. It’s a hard slog trying to make money blogging. The key for me is to treat blogging as a business venture. One that I can make money from and so can you. If you want to pay off your mortgage earlier, then chances are that you will need to possibly look into methods of earning extra cash.

Sucessful bloggers out there treat blogging as a business and we can learn a lot from these guys in many areas of the way they operate.