Hamburg travel guide | What to do in Hamburg for guys

So should you visit Hamburg? I’ll save you time right now - the answer is yes. This Hamburg travel guide is going to take you through why this hidden gem is an absolute essential for any traveller’s bucket list and how to make the most of it when you’re here.

Let’s jump straight into it. This is your Hamburg travel guide!

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Is Hamburg a good city to visit?

Honestly, Hamburg is one of my favourite cities to date. I was blown away by how friendly people were, the beautiful architecture, the quality of the food, how much there was to do and weirdly, how nice the weather was!

It’s not somewhere that immediately springs to mind when you’re planning places to visit but in my opinion, it is the jewel in Germany’s crown.

This sentiment is backed up by a lot of German’s I spoke to who told me that Hamburg offers the absolute best of Germany without any of the downsides.

A big statement, but it felt like a utopia!

Is Hamburg good for guys?

Absolutely. Hamburg is a perfect place for guys to visit. There is so much to do, whether that’s sightseeing, going shopping at high end stores or getting on the sauce! There is absolutely something for everybody. Here’s a few things I did during my stay that I think are perfect for the blokes.

Bars

There are so, so many places to grab a drink throughout Hamburg, but I am not a massive drinker so didn’t get round to too many.

What I did do (like any good tourist) was hit up a local Irish Bar which I can attest to being great.

Restaurants

More my thing these days! Hamburg is full of gems. I went to Cafe Paris which was unbelievable. Try the steak tartare and be amazed.

I also visited a few more that I’ll detail a little further on!

Reeperbahn

Image source: getyourguide.co.uk

We only went down in the day but you could already see the buzz beginning. And that was only midweek. Apparently, the Reeperbahn gets crazy in an evening.

If you’re into a big party, this will be your Valhalla.

Cars

Germany and cars go hand in hand. They’re a match made in haven.

Get ready to walk round with your jaw on the floor as Porsches, G Wagons and all sorts of supercars fly past you with such regularity that it almost seems absurd.

I also stumbled into the Polestar showroom as I spotted the incredibly rare Polestar 1 in the window. In true German fashion, the guy in there was so friendly that I had to shake his hand when we left. He opened up the car, let me sit in it and we chatted for about 20 minutes about cars like a pair of nerds.

Football

Another thing synoymous with Germany is football. Their national team is phenomenal and their league is full of star-studded teams (especially Bayern Munich), but Hamburg has its own slice of football heritage and you can feel that running through the city.

The St. Pauli stadium is literally a stone’s throw from the Reeperbahn and Hamburg’s stadium isn’t much further.

It’s a city with two huge teams and you’d be silly not to try and absorb a bit of it.

What to do in Hamburg

Boat tour to get your bearings

This is something I do in every city where a boat tour is an option, because it lets you you see so much of a place in a short period of time.

It’s also an amazing experience in its own right. I love how relaxing boat rides are and this was the best I’ve been on - they had a bar on board! Great way to spend an hour when you arrive in Hamburg.

Talk to locals / taxis

This is something I do even before I hop on a boat tour of the city and it’s why I always get a taxi/Uber from the airport to my accommodation.

And this is because taxi drivers have the most knowledge of their city. They drive around it and talk to dozens of people every single day.

They are usually chatty and always want to showcase their city in the best way possible to visitors. I find Uber to work even better because of the their rating system. Drivers will usually go above and beyond to help you out for a 5-star rating.

So I recommend booking yourself one from the airport and striking up a conversation with your driver. Let it flow and in no time, you’ll be talking about all the best places to go, things to see and stuff to do. This local knowledge always comes in handy.

St Pauli

If you’re into football whatsoever you will have heard about St. Pauli. If you could get to a game here then I absolutely recommend it.

Unfortunately the main stadium was closed when I arrived so I could only see glimpses from outside and then took a look through their shop.

But there is a museum and tours available from Fri-Sun if you can’t get a ticket for a game.

St. Michaelis church

This church is absolutely beautiful and for about €15 you can go all the way to the top for the best view in Hamburg.

There’s viewing platforms and a huge bell up there that goes off every 15 minutes so there’s quite a lot going on! An absolute must do.

Museum of Illusions

This was one of the first things I made a beeline for when we arrived because I knew how much it’d be.

I was not disappointed! To my surprise, everything in Hamburg was much cheaper than I anticipated and the Museum of Illusions was no different. Great place at a great price.

Alter Elbtunnel

Whilst this isn’t the most *exciting* thing in Hamburg to do, it’s still a nice interesting walk that takes 10 minutes and is free. So don’t sleep on the Alter Elbtunnel!

Town hall

Easily the most aesthetic town hall I’ve ever laid eyes on! This was a proper marvel. Another cracking freebie too.

High end shopping

If you fancy spending some big bucks, then head to just behind the town hall and you’ll find rows and rows of designer stores from Cartier to Gucci to Louis Vuitton. There is absolutely everything. I honestly had no idea that Hamburg had this level of luxury.

Image source: Cartier.com

The fact that it has something for literally everyone is astonishing to me.

All of the fun of the Reeperbahn, the football clubs, restaurants, bars and all ranges of shopping PLUS amazing car showrooms (which is my personal fav) is mind boggling. All of this in a city centre is just next level.

Bravo Hamburg!

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Honourable mentions that I didn’t get around to

I was only in Hamburg for 3 days and even though I got through a LOT of stuff, it felt like I barely scratched the surface. Here’s a couple of the popular things that I didn’t get round to but I would imagine to be great fun.

Bikes

I didn’t quite get round to this, but you can hire bikes all across the city. They even had them available to rent at our hotel which was a really nice touch.

Chocoversum

Image source: Hamburg-news.hamburg

What’s not to love about a museum all about chocolate?!

I really regret not going here, but next time I will 100% be heading down.

Miniaturmuseum

Image source: familienurlaub-info.com

Another one I regret not getting round to, but the Miniaturmuseum seems like a must-see for those with the time available.

Yes it might look a bit childish, but apparently it’s great for people of all ages.

Where to stay in Hamburg

If you want your trip to be as perfect as possible, you need your accommodation to be spot on. Luckily, mine was.

Madison Hamburg

The Madison is the perfect base for exploration in Hamburg. Its location lends itself nicely to exploring all four corners of the city centre, so you’re pretty much amongst the action as soon as you step out the front door.

Its rooms were huge, with a full desk setup for people like me who work from their laptop. We had a great balcony with an uninterrupted view right up to St. Michaelis Church AND the room was stacked with treats like Pringles, Hamburg popcorn and espressos. What a place.

Add to this that they have a top-rated restaurant and high-end luxury gym & spa (for free!) and I think it’s quite apparent that The Madison is a no-brainer for anyone visiting Hamburg.

And my personal favourite part - the unlimited sweets jar that seemed to restock every hour of the day…

Gym is essential

Any self-respecting modern day gent should strive to be active in some way and the Madison offers the absolute best way to do this.

Next door is a David Lloyd gym and spa that you have complete, free access to. This is by far and away the best hotel gym I’ve ever seen. It even had an official Hyrox certification which is unreal. It was also perfect for me as I am training for my first Hyrox competition in November.

Where to eat in Hamburg

As I touched on near the start of the article, the food in Hamburg is way better than I had imagined. Believe it or not, it’s not just Bratwurst and Schnitzel! Even though both of them are 10/10.

Froyo

I noticed this place on the way back to our hotel and immediately had cravings. It was then my breakfast of choice the next day and it was well worth the wait.

Toppings including white brownie, lotus biscoff and cheesecake tempt you in and deliver on their allure. Equally, you can get ample healthy toppings too but I had no desire for them during my visit.

Marley’s

Marley’s is actually part of the Madison Hotel so we had to give it a go. And I’m glad we did! The food was great, super attentive staff (as per the usual in Hamburg it would seem) and a great setting. If the weather calls for it, try and grab a seat outside. You won’t regret it.

Cafe Paris

I had seen this online and thought how cool it looked, but in person it is so much cooler. It has such an old school vibe, the staff were great and food was even better.

Cannot recommend this place highly enough.

Juicery by Em

It presents itself as quite ‘vegan’ but the Juicery by Em catered for everyone! I had a chicken and rice bowl which came with all sorts of random ingredients like pineapple, melon and cabbage that I had no idea could work so well together.

Being in a juicery, of course I had to try the juice itself which I have to say, was probably the best I’ve ever had.

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Overall, Hamburg is an absolute must visit for anyone who wants a city that feels like home immediately and offers basically anything you could want.

I cannot thank the team at the City of Hamburg, Come to Hamburg and the Madison Hotel for making this trip happen, so be sure to check them out when planning your own trip.

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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What To Invest 5000 Dollars In? Explore The Viable Options

What can you do with $5000 in your pocket? You may buy things you want or convert them into hundreds of thousands of dollars. But how does that happen? Intelligent investment is the way to go if you wish to grow your money.

My idea of investment is to accumulate funds until it is significant enough for funding. When you have enough funds, invest and grow it. If you keep any amount of money in a savings account, it will only increase through nominal bank interest rates, which sit at around 1.75% in the UK. 

That does not make a worthy addition to it. But some of it spent on a worthwhile investment can grow into thousands of dollars in the future. It can open doors for generating more money. 

The question that might come to your mind at this state is what to invest 5000 dollars in. There might be plenty of options, but finding the most viable and profitable for yourself can be challenging. This blog provides the ultimate list of best investments for beginners to help you grow your income and wealth. 

What To Do When You Have $5000?

If you have five grand in your pocket, you can do many things with it. You may spend, save, or invest it. As time passes, every penny you have loses its value. Smart people are those who think of multiplying them through smart investments. Instead of spending a large sum of money and seeing it devalue over time, a better decision is to invest and earn money. 

The answer to “what to invest 5000 dollars in” has evolved a lot over time. Five or ten years back, the best option might be to put it in a savings account and make a profit. Over time, things have changed drastically in this fast-moving world. Now you have several conventional and unconventional ways to invest your funds and make money. 

One popular investment is in an online course that provides knowledge or training to make money. If your financial goals align with this objective, you can enrol in this amazing blogging course. It only requires you to pay a one-time fee of £799 and get access to all the secrets of success in blogging. 

Careful and smart investments can help you in your journey to become financially free and grow your wealth. Five thousand dollars might not make much difference to your life, but they can do so if you invest them smartly. 

Learn How To Make Investments

Before deciding what to invest 5000 dollars in, you must first know how to make an investment. It is not as easy as many people think. You must do your homework before you enter the market and explore investment opportunities. You can begin with the following steps to decide what to invest in with $5000. 

Putting money in the market isn't as simple as putting money into your investment account and then investing into stock markets, Roth IRA and index funds - you need a strategy to build wealth in an investment portfolio.

Determine Your Investment Goals

Your first step to making a profitable investment is to have clearly defined objectives. What to invest in with $5000? How to invest $5000 and make money? Ask these and many other similar questions to clarify what you want to achieve. When it comes to investment goals, keep the following things in your mind. 

• Your investment goals can be short- and long-term.

• To accomplish short-term objectives, you can opt for investments with quick returns.

• You might earn comparatively lesser returns for such investments.

• To accomplish long-term objectives, you can go for investments with higher interests over a long period.

• The returns do not always depend on the investment period.

Once you have defined your investment goals, all other things sort out by themselves. Make sure all of your activities are aligned with your objectives. 

Evaluate Potential Investment Options

There can be multiple ways of investing $5000. Not all of them will be compatible with your investment goals. Then how to best invest 5000 dollars? You must identify the available options and list them all. The criteria to select or drop an opportunity would be its compatibility with your investment objectives. After you have all the potential options in your hand, you can then decide what to invest 5000 dollars in. 

Do Market Research

Once you know the direction of your efforts, you can start your journey. Market research is crucial whether you are making a small or big investment. Your hard-earned $5000 must be utilised for the most profitable investments. If you are interested in investing in stocks, research the blue chips and growing companies. 

Learn about their respective industries, market competition, previous performance, and other factors affecting their productivity. Try to collect information from credible sources to ensure its effectiveness. Do the same for every investment option. 

Prioritise and Shortlist

After evaluating investment options based on the latest market information and your goals, you can shortlist the top best among them. There can be multiple viable options for your investment goals. Identify them and inject your funds into such investments. 

How to Best Invest 5000 Dollars?

As an investor, you want a higher return on your investment. You might think of what to do when you have 5000 dollars. I have mentioned a few things you must do before investing. It is better to do them before choosing what to invest 5000 dollars in. 

• Pay off your outstanding debts: Make sure you do not have any debts before investing. If you have a credit card bill, bank loan, or any other debt outstanding, it is better to pay it off first. An existing debt will keep on surging due to the accumulation of interest. It might even surpass the return you expect to earn through your investment.

• Set up an emergency fund: Having a backup fund can be your best friend on rainy days. You can do this by saving some money or investing it in a highly liquid short-term investment plan. You can use this fund in case of any medical or other emergencies.

• Invest some money in a savings account: This ensures the security and liquidity of funds. Keep some amount in a savings account, and you can easily withdraw it after three or six months for your needs.

What to Invest 5000 Dollars in? Your Investment Options!

Fortunately, you have multiple options for investing your 5000 dollars. You can choose multiple options to diversify your risk or rely on any one of them to earn the maximum return. Investing in single security might be viable in the short run, but it is better to diversify your portfolio for long-term investments. 

Before exploring the investment options, have a look at some prerequisites. You can follow any method that suits your financial goals and risk tolerance. 

• You can set up a brokerage account if you wish to invest in financial assets. This account will help you execute your transactions. You can also have a commission-free account for self-directed trading.

• You can hire a financial advisor to direct your investment activities. A financial advisor charges advisory fees and provides you with the best investment plan according to your financial status. However, it might be a costly option for a $5,000 investment.

• Try passive investment using Robo-advisors. A Robo-advisor represents an investment platform that allows you to place trades passively. These platforms use specialised algorithms to manage your investments and do everything on your behalf. You do not have to bother about what to invest 5000 dollars in.

Investment in Financial Assets

Financial assets are the most popular among investors. They offer varying risk levels as well as returns. The majority of risk-taking investors like to invest in financial assets. There is a long list of financial assets in which you can invest your $5000. I have mentioned some examples from high-, medium, and low-risk assets. 

Stocks

Stocks are the most popular investment option for people considering “what to invest 5000 dollars in”. They represent your share in a company in the proportion of the value of stocks you buy. A survey by finder.com reveals that 33% of British people own stocks. There are various profitable stocks available at exchanges that are frequently traded. Learn about them to find the most profitable ones according to your financial goals. 

It is better to seek professional assistance if you are a beginner. Your financial advisor or broker can provide you with t information about the best stocks to invest in. Diversifying your portfolio by investing in different industries’ stocks is better than accumulating all the shares in the same industry. 

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

Exchange Traded Funds resemble a pool of funds that invest in different securities and commodities. ETFs are also traded on stock exchanges. If you are looking for a less risky investment option, ETFs can be an ideal choice. They invest in different kinds of securities, and, therefore, the risk diversifies. 

The prices of ETFs change in real time, like stock prices. You can also get the capital gain besides the share of the profit earned from investments. 

Mutual Funds

Another low-risk investment option is mutual funds. They represent the pool of money gathered by multiple investors and managed by a professional financial manager. The professional manager designs a portfolio to invest the pool of money in various stocks, bonds, and securities. The return earned is distributed among the investors. 

If you invest in a mutual fund, you become entitled to earn a share of the income generated by that fund. Mutual funds carry low risk as the portfolio is diversified and handled by a professional. In case you want to be on the safer side while deciding what to invest 5000 dollars in, you can go for mutual funds. 

Bonds

Bonds are long-term investments in debt securities. You can invest in bonds issued by the government or corporations. They are also less risky investments in which the investor becomes the lender. The company that issues the bonds becomes the borrower. You can get your principal amount back along with the interest after the bonds mature.

You might get a low return on bonds, but they are perfect for diversifying your risk. Since they are less risky, you have a safe side of having some money if other investments do not perform well. 

Certificates of Deposit (CDs)

A risk-free investment option is that of investing in Certificates of Deposit. Credit unions and banks offer these against the money you deposit for a specific period. After that specified time, you get your principal amount, including the interest income. Different banks offer varying interest rates. 

CDs are a good option to diversify your portfolio by providing a cushion of a safe investment. The interest might be low, but your principal amount is secured for a short period. If you are worried about how to invest 5000 dollars online, you can invest in CDs in online banks. They sometimes offer a higher interest rate. 

Money Market Accounts (MMAs)

Money market accounts are like saving accounts. You can deposit your $5000 and earn interest against it. A difference between MMAs and saving accounts is that they provide a cash withdrawal facility. You have a debit card to withdraw cash when needed. However, you must keep them for a long time to earn higher interest. 

Investment in Non-Financial Assets

What to invest 5000 dollars in other than financial assets? Investment options are not limited to financial assets only. Various alternative investments are also available for those looking for non-financial assets. 

Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency has pretty much become a buzzword nowadays. It is not financial but rather a virtual asset protected by heavy encryption. It is one of the most popular investment options among young investors. One thing you must consider is that they are very volatile. 

If you are a risk-averse investor, you can invest in this comprehensive online course. You can get detailed insights into starting a profitable blog from scratch. The best thing is that a money-back guarantee backs it. 

You can use cryptocurrency to buy goods. You may also benefit from the increase in their value by selling them. The most famous cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. It has become quite handy to trade cryptocurrencies, but market volatility can be an issue for low-risk tolerance investors. 

Real Estate

Real estate investment is popular among investors seeking a significant increase in their wealth. It is a long-term investment that allows you to earn through the increase in the value of the real estate. You may invest in property on your own or through investment platforms. Buying a property with $5,000 might be difficult, but crowdfunding can help. 

Besides crowdfunding, there are companies offering their asset management services. They are known as REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts). You can invest in them through the stock exchange. What to invest 5000 dollars in? It is upon your discretion, but real estate can be a good addition to your portfolio.

Precious Metal Commodities

Precious metal commodities include platinum, gold, silver, and other metals. These metals have a stable value with low market volatility. Many investment platforms offer these commodities for investment. They are highly liquid, easy to purchase, and are considered to act as a cushion against surging inflation. 

Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Non Fungible Tokens, commonly known as NFTs, are a growing investment option with great potential to generate income. By investing in NFTs, you get ownership of these digital assets. Once you have an attractive collection of NFTs, you can earn by flipping them.

When adequate demand is generated for these NFTs, you can sell them and earn profit through a value increase. A great advantage of investing in NFTs is that you can easily buy, exchange, and sell these in NFT marketplaces. 

Investment in Yourself

If someone asks me, what is a good investment for 5000 dollars, I would say invest in yourself. While deciding what to invest 5000 dollars in, people usually forget this important aspect. Even if you do not invest the whole amount in yourself, allocate a portion of it for your development and growth. Here are a few ways to define how to invest in yourself and make the most of it.

Develop a Skill

The best possible investment is the one in yourself. You have 5000 dollars; why not invest them in something to increase your value? The most important thing that defines you is your personality, skills, talents, and character. It is neither your bank balance nor your free cash. 

Hundreds of online courses are designed for installing skills among individuals. Out of your five grand, you can spend only £799 to enrol in this specialised course to learn how to blog. Blogging is a popular activity that can open doors for steady income. This course covers everything you need to know to excel at blogging. 

This would be an investment with multiple benefits. Not only will you learn a skill, but you will also be able to earn money through it. What is the best part about it? You only have to pay £799 once and get access to a complete mastery course. 

Start a Business

It is never too late to start your own small business. $5,000 is enough to launch a startup for you. If you are still thinking, “what is the best investment for 5000 dollars” starting a business can be a worthwhile option. This investment can grow more than you might have thought, but it requires hard work. A business is not only about investing money. Your passion, hard work, and consistency make it a success. 

I classify investing in a business as an investment in yourself because your business does not grow alone. It offers valuable learning in the form of improved management, critical thinking, and decision-making skills. These skills go a long way in your life, proving your startup a worthwhile investment.

Invest in your Health

Investing in your health might be the last thing on the “what to invest 5000 dollars in” list, but it is also connected with all ideas. All your investments are in vain if you do not have good health to enjoy their benefits. Allocate some amount from your five grand for your health. It can include anything from buying a good pair of joggers to paying your gym’s fee. You can even build the perfect home gym if you want to. 

Eat healthy food, get a good and comfortable sleep, and exercise regularly. Do not be reluctant to spend money on your health. It is an investment rather than an expenditure. Even your monetary benefits rely on your good health.

Investing money might not seem that difficult, but the real challenge is how to invest $5000 dollars and make money. To make money, you need to be careful with your investments. Make sure you make a wise decision. 

Factors to Consider When Making Investment Decision

Investing $5000 is a crucial decision, and you must be careful about it. I have compiled a list of some of the most important factors you must consider before investing your money. They can help you make better decisions and make significant profits from your investments. 

Return on Investment

The most important factor that is the basis of all investment decisions is the return on investment. Why do you invest your money? To generate income or returns, right? You must measure how much profit your investment will bring. If the returns are not compatible with your expected or planned profits, you may leave that investment or withdraw funds from it. 

Risk Tolerance

A popular principle in the investment world says, the riskier the investment, the higher the returns. There is always some risk in financial matters, irrespective of their size. Identifying and analysing the risks associated with the investment options you are interested in is mandatory. Whether you want to go for risky investments depends on your investment objectives and the amount of investment. 

What to invest 5000 dollars in depends greatly on your risk tolerance. 

• High-risk tolerance represents accepting short-term risks for long-term benefits and rewards. Higher levels of risk tolerance allow investors to invest in riskier investments such as cryptocurrency and stocks.

• Mid-risk tolerance includes diversifying risky investments without compromising too much on the profits. Investors having this risk tolerance level usually opt for a passive investment approach to invest in stocks and bonds. Diversification is necessary to mitigate the risk.

• Low-risk tolerance, as the name represents, puts investors under stress in case they face loss. For investors with low risk tolerance, you can opt for CDs or bonds. The risk on these assets is minimal to negligible, but the rate of return is also low.

Rate of Inflation

You cannot and must not ignore inflation, which is always there in an economy. It is an economic factor beyond your control but significantly impacts your investment decisions and returns. The more time you spend with the money in your hand, the more its value decreases. Keep inflation in your mind when determining the return for a better and clearer cost and benefit analysis. 

Liquidity of the Investment

The risk of uncertainty always remains there in investments. Some factors are beyond human control and can lead you to liquidate your investment at some point. If the asset you have invested in is highly liquid, you can easily trade it for cash. On the contrary, less liquid assets take more time to sell and liquidate into cash. 

What to invest 5000 dollars in depends on the asset’s liquidity also. High liquidity lets you realise the value appreciation quickly when the asset’s price changes in the market. You can easily sell it and get higher returns by investing in some other assets. 

Tax Obligations

When you make an investment or earn profits on it, you are obliged to pay tax. Taxes vary among different types of investment options. For instance, if you invest in stocks, you must pay tax when you realise the capital gain. This means that at the time of selling your stocks at an increased price, you will be entitled to pay tax. 

On the other hand, some investments make you liable for a tax right away. For instance, if you earn a stock dividend, you will be liable for paying its tax. The same is the case with ETFs and bond coupons. You must consider this before making an investment.  

Making an investment that fulfils your financial goals and helps you generate money is not an easy task. Make sure you check on all factors influencing our decision and its outcome. 

There is no one-fits-all solution in investment. What might be viable for others may not suit your financial needs. You must analyse and decide which plan suits you. 

Does Your Investment Style Matter?

Making money from investment is not as simple as purchasing security and receiving income against it. When you think about what to invest 5000 dollars in, it takes several different factors into account. The most important factor among them is your investment style.

Have a look at the most common investment styles to identify which one is yours and how to best invest 5000 dollars accordingly.

• Active Investing: Active investors are risk takers who want to execute self-directed trades. As an active investor, you might be more concerned about short-term benefits than the long-term impact of your investment.

• Passive Investing: Those investors who do not want to keep a check on market performance every now and then follow a passive investment approach. The investment is usually medium to low risk and for the long term.

• Buy and Hold: This approach includes investors seeking long-term investment benefits. Instead of trading frequently, they tend to buy and hold their portfolio to realise a capital gain. This approach is sometimes called HODL in the crypto community.

• Growth: The growth-focused investment style represents investors who invest in stocks that are expected to grow in the future. Instead of getting high dividends, such investors prefer long-term growth of the company and stocks.

• Value: This style is somehow the opposite of a growth approach. Investors preferring value over growth usually invest in undervalued shares that are expected to perform well in the future. They buy the stocks for a lesser price and wait till it increases in value.

Wrapping Up

Now you know where to begin to make the most of your 5000 dollars investment. Investment is probably the most productive way to generate income. It takes the long-term view and helps you increase your wealth and net worth over time. The key to successful investing is a strong and well-planned beginning. 

Hopefully, you no longer have the query about what to invest 5000 dollars in. Instead of limiting yourself to one choice, I suggest making a diverse portfolio. Better to include something from each investment options section for a balanced portfolio. Do not forget to include the Blog Lifestyle Mastery course in your investment basket. This one-time investment comes with a money-back guarantee and will open doors for a steady income.

Create a diverse investment basket, including traditional and unconventional investments. It will provide you with more exposure and increase your profitability. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is The Smartest Thing To Do With $5000?

The smartest thing to do with $5000 is to invest them in a profitable investment option. You may invest in financial assets, non-financial assets, or in yourself. Run a cost and benefit analysis to determine which is the most profitable and viable option for you. 

Should I Invest $5000?

Yes, you should definitely invest your money. Nothing stops you from doing so except that you have an urgent need to fulfil with this money. Investing helps you multiply your income and increases your wealth. 

How To Invest In Yourself?

You can invest in yourself by spending the money on learning some skills. You can make good money when you are equipped with lucrative and in-demand skills. Investing in yourself means making yourself capable of multiplying your investment. 

What To Do When You Have $5000?

When you have $5000, you can either spend or invest them. If you are not in urgent need of money, it is better to invest and grow them. There are plenty of investment options available according to your risk tolerance, investment objectives, and financial goals. 

Is It Necessary To Diversify Your Portfolio?

No, it is not necessary to diversify your portfolio, but it is exceptionally beneficial. Diversification not only mitigates risks but also provides you with the opportunity to maximise your earnings. It is effective for an investment of $5,000 as well as $5,000,000.

How To Invest 5000 Dollars Online?

You can invest 5000 dollars online by opening a saving account or getting Certificates of Deposit from an online bank. You can also trade in stocks, bonds, cryptocurrency, and other assets online. 

How Many Blog Posts To Make Money In 2023? Secrets revealed

Have you been dreaming of making money with blogging like many others? Well, it is not as easy as you might think, but every bit is worth the hype. If you plan to make money through blogging, you must gear up to go out of the way and know the answer to “how many blog posts to make money?”

Blogging has gained popularity as a lucrative career all around the world. One of the major reasons for its popularity is its effectiveness as an SEO strategy. People also opt for it as a side hustle activity for generating passive income.

Many bloggers, especially beginners, get distressed by how many blog posts to make money are enough in 2023. Let’s discover it in the article below. 

I have found many beginners struggling with the number of ideal blog posts. How many blogs do I need to make money? I got this question so many times that I thought writing a detailed article on it would be helpful for you. Read along to find out my views about it. 

This article discusses everything you need to know about your blogging earnings. Let’s get into the nitty gritty of earning through blogging. 

Source: Pexels

How Do Blogs Make Money?

Before getting into the details of how many blog posts to make money in 2023, you must first know how it happens. For instance, if you are a blogger in the UK, you need to find out “how do blogs make money in the UK?” It will help you design your strategy to excel in blogging and earn money through it. 

There was a time when even I didn't know how to make money from blogging and had to learn everything from scratch. As of today, I know many ways you can use your blog to generate income. Here I have mentioned the three most popular ways bloggers use. 

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an excellent and probably the most popular way to grow your blogging income. The most popular affiliate programs include Adobe Affiliate Program, Amazon Associates, and eBay Partner Network.

Being one of the most popular forms of digital marketing, it is not something new. You might have heard of it. Here is how you make money through it. 

• You can advertise any brand's product or service on your website and earn a commission against it.

• Your website earns money when a visitor clicks on the link and buys the product or service you were promoting in your blog.

Advertising

Besides affiliate marketing, you can also earn through placing PPC or CPM ads on your website. When you grow a significant audience on your blog, advertising networks such as Google AdSense, Mediavine, Propeller Ads, and Monumetric place their ads on your site. 

• Against PPC ads, you earn money when a visitor clicks on the ad.

• You get money for every 1,000 visitors who view CPM ads.

Now you might think, “how much can I make with 1000 views on my blog?” It mainly depends on the advertising network for which you are displaying ads. The higher number of views leads to the greater chances of visitors viewing and clicking on ads. 

Selling Digital Products

Another popular method of earning money is selling digital products. It includes online courses, eBooks, workshops, and consultation services. A great example here is basetemplates.com. They earn a handsome amount of revenue by selling digital pitch decks. How can you make money through it? 

• You can earn high profits by converting visitors into customers for your digital products and services.

• If you choose to sell them as an affiliate, you can earn a commission against sales.

How Much Money Can You Make from Blogging?

There is a huge potential to make money through blogging. How much money you can make from writing a blog depends on how much time and effort you put into it. Besides that, several other factors also determine how much money you can make from a blog in the UK.

As reported by Indeed, the average salary for a blogger in the UK is £30,221/year. This is the national average for full-time professional bloggers in the UK. If you have just begun blogging, you might earn between £150 and £10,000 a year.

How many blog posts to make money? You need views more than the posts. As your audience grows, you can earn £3,500 to £4,500 monthly. 

I know bloggers who easily make six to seven figures a year with their blogs. The more effort you invest, the quicker you will multiply your first year blogging income. Getting your first earnings through blogging might take six to eight months.

The key to success is to make consistent efforts. There is no specific amount on how much money you can make from writing a blog. 

Your viewers and subscribers are the main sources of generating income. The more subscribers and page views you have, your income will increase. You must focus on what your audience is looking for. Work hard to design your content around their needs; nothing can stop you from massive growth. 

Source: Pexels

How Many Blog Posts to Make Money?

You might have heard about bloggers earning millions, and let me tell you, it is all real. However, you might not get your first year blogging income in millions. There are several ways in which bloggers make money, starting from scratch.

The question in many bloggers’ minds is, “how many blogs do I need to make money posts to make money?”. What is the magic number?

Let me make it clear before we proceed; there is no magic number of blogs guaranteeing steady income. It depends on several other factors, among which your content’s quality tops the list. 

But wait here for a second. Does prioritising quality means you can publish one blog a month? No. If I intend to earn through blogging, this is the last thing I think of doing. Let me make things a bit simple for you. 

• Some bloggers recommend writing a blog daily, while others think 3-6 posts a week are enough. I recommend setting a schedule at your convenience.

• Blogging daily might seem challenging at the beginning and may even overwhelm you. Instead, set a schedule and follow it. Whether you start with 3 blogs a week or 5, be consistent.

• Your aim must be to drive traffic to your website. You can do it with 2 blogs a week as well as one blog daily. What matters the most is that your blogs are unique, interesting, and valuable to the audience.

• High-value blogs quickly make their place among the audience. Once you gain experience, try publishing 15-25 new blogs monthly. Make sure they are all high-in-value, and search engine optimised.

Keep in mind that the numbers vary depending on your niche. It depends on your market competition, website authority, search volume, and the number of visitors per month. 

My experience in this field exceeds 3 years now, so it’s taken me a while to figure out what works. I used to post daily, but now I just don’t have the time with other projects going on! But that’s after I’ve put the graft in to get to this point.

Factors Affecting Your Blogging Income

Successful blogging helps you earn enough that you might think of quitting your job. Here are other factors that determine your blogging income besides the number of blogs on your website. 

• Your website’s niche and blog topic

• The amount of traffic and page views.

• Your blog’s monetisation.

• The quality of your content.

• Search Engine Optimization.

• Type of the affiliate product.

This is a comprehensive list that pretty much says it all. It is difficult to determine how much money a single blog can make, but some high-quality blogs on your website can help you earn thousands in a month. To determine how many blog posts to make money, you need to consider these factors as well. 

Your Website’s Niche

When making money through blogging is your concern, the niche you choose has primary importance. It determines your targeted keywords, audience, market competition, and many other factors.

Choose wisely. Do not forget to consider your interest, expertise, and commercial value of the niche. The higher the commercial value, the easier it would be to maximise your profits. 

Traffic on Your Website

Your website’s traffic is a defining factor for your blogging income. Let’s suppose you write about a topic in your selected niche. You did the best research, found authentic information, wrote it eloquently, and still got minimal traffic.

Why? Because the number of people searching for what you are offering is low. You cannot expect 1000 visitors when only 100 people search for it online. 

You might be thinking about how many blog posts it takes to grow traffic. Once again, there is no specific figure. Your website’s traffic depends on the quality first and then the quantity. I think 20-25 well-written blogs a month is a good figure to draw an audience towards your blog, but the right number could be 10 in your circumstance.

Website’s Monetisation 

The monetisation methods you use for your blog are very important. I have already mentioned the widely used monetisation methods above. If you choose only one of them, say Google AdSense, you will have a small revenue.

Affiliate marketing and ad networks offer higher income to blogging sites than Google AdSense. Try multiple methods to maximise your earnings.

Quality of the Content

If you have concerns about how to make money from a blog in the UK, focus on content quality. High-quality content is essential for growing a blog. It attracts an audience and ad networks that can help you make significant money.

If the content is not good enough, you will have to sacrifice the credibility of your website. Keep the content relevant and easy to read for your audience.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation is crucial for your blog. Even if thousands of people are searching for the keyword you have picked for your blog, you might not get any traffic unless you rank high. People visit your website when you are visible to them. Make sure your content is well optimised to appear on the search results. 

Type of Affiliate Product

The type of product you are doing affiliate marketing is also an important factor affecting your blogging income. It determines the commission you will earn as a result of affiliate marketing. Some products and services offer higher commissions than others. 

For instance, software affiliate marketing is considered one of the most profitable affiliate products. It may even lead you to earn lifetime revenue. You must choose the affiliate product wisely, considering the resulting revenue. 

For Squarespace websites, the best way to ensure you’re doing this right is using a Squarespace SEO plugin. Squarespace is great and used by many successful bloggers as it deals with all web hosting and design for you.

Source: Pexels

How to Make Money from a Blog?

One of the questions most beginners ask me is, “how to make money from a blog?” Finding effective strategies to earn through blogging is very crucial. If you are new to blogging, a comprehensive beginner’s guide might help. Here are some of the tried and tested tips followed by top bloggers to earn a handsome amount of money. 

Leverage your Platform

The greatest learning in my blogging career is understanding and utilising your platform's power. Do not take your blog for granted. It is the foundation for helping you earn money and scale your earnings. It can make more difference in your career and life than you may think. 

You can test different ideas to identify the one that fits your blog the most. It can also serve as a platform to connect you with your audience and increase your network. How much money you can make from writing a blog depends on how better you utilise your website. Make the most of it.

Only until you have leveraged your platform, can you start getting sponsored posts, sell products and gain revenue through affiliate links.

Focus on Your Audience

Rather than stuffing your website with plenty of blogs, focus on creating value for your audience. It would automatically attract them to your website and increase your page views. You should focus on increasing the number of visitors to your page rather than “how many blog posts to make money”. Your well-written blogs are no use for the monetary benefit if no one visits them. 

Social Media Promotion

 Successful and high-earning bloggers use smart marketing strategies to promote their blogs. You can simply use social media platforms to promote your blog without spending a single penny. Define your targeted audience, reach out to them, and increase their engagement to enhance your site's visibility. 

These tips are not limited to any particular niche. You can use them for your respective niche and get your desired results. Implement them and see how much money a single blog can make.

What Do I Recommend?

Well, I have explained it pretty clearly in the entire article. You can neither compromise the number of blogs for quality nor quality for the numbers. Your blog posts and the resulting traffic go hand in hand.

You need a comprehensive plan that covers all important factors affecting your blogging income. It might not be that easy, but it is worth it at the end of the day. 

If you have a knack and flair for blogging or want to make money faster, this amazing course can be a game changer. It offers everything you might need to become a pro blogger and opens the doors for making crazy money. You might get a detailed answer to “how many blog posts to make money in 2023, and how many blog posts does it take to grow traffic” also. 

Designed after years of experience and a trial-and-error process, it is the perfect foundation you need for a head start in your blogging career. It guarantees to transform your blogging career with significant results. What if it does not happen? It is rare, but you can always have your money back. 

Seems too good to be true? You must try it to believe it. So, what are you waiting for? Book your slots and begin earning today. 

Wrapping Up

Up till now, you might have got a clear answer to how many blog posts to make money in 2023. Luckily, making money from blogging is not a challenge if you are a passionate blogger. It initially offers slow but steady success opportunities, but once you are into it, you can expect to elevate your income significantly. Keep growing your audience and establish your brand. 

Starting a blog and making it profitable for you is not an overnight job. You need the patience to establish and grow your blog gradually. Remember, there is no shortcut to success in blogging. You have to be patient in the beginning until fruitful results start coming. 

I hope the article has answered your queries regarding blog posts and earnings. Browse below to explore some other amazing stuff also. 

How to Create a Blog for Free on Google and Earn Money

Can you make big money from a free blog? The short answer is yes. However, there’s a lot involved. If you want to know how to create a blog for free on Google and earn money from it, this detailed guide is an eye-opener before you hop on this lucrative bandwagon.

However, before we dive into the guide proper, I will address some things most guides won’t.

Why a Free Google Blog Can Be Lucrative

Let me start by stating that free blogs can bring you money.

Here are six reasons to back up my claim:

• Some free blogs allow monetisation.

• Even free blogs appear in Google searches.

• People will barely be able to tell the difference between free and paid blogs.

• You can design it to be attractive.

• You don’t have to spend.

While you still have a lot to learn about creating a blog for free on Google and earning money from it, you could obtain all the required skills within weeks by purchasing my Blog Lifestyle Mastery course.

1. Some free blogs allow monetisation.

The biggest reason you can make money with free blogs is that some platforms allow monetisation in any form. Luckily for you, this includes Google’s Blogger — which seems to be your current choice.

A significant reason why people ask whether free blogs earn money is the blanket financial prohibition on most platforms. Google’s Blogger doesn’t have such bans.

Tip: if you have a substantial budget to run your blog, I’d suggest you opt for other paid online blogging platforms like Squarespace. This platform has juicy perks, such as the choice of purchasing website design templates created by others. Personally, I have an award-winning Squarespace design studio and boast over 190 custom Squarespace website designs.

2. Even free blogs appear in Google searches.

One of the biggest concerns of wannabe free Bloggers is whether their articles will rank well. Google clarified that free blog articles could rank high if they provide valuable content and employ proper SEO practices.

3. People will barely be able to tell the difference between free and paid blogs.

Although free blogs are at a slight disadvantage in terms of professionalism, people will trust any free blog that publishes quality content that solves users’ problems. Just focus on offering value to readers and following the right SEO strategies to increase your monthly pageviews. This is critical to earning money with Google blogs.

4. You can design it to be attractive.

Free blogs are pretty limited in customisation. But the available customisation options are enough to design a simple and catchy blog acceptable to visitors. The good part is that you can continue to improve your blog’s design as you publish content.

5. You don’t have to spend.

Spending money eats a chunk of your blogging income. Some hosts will cost you several hundred dollars a year, which reduces your overall income, especially if you live in a third-world country with a weak currency.

The hosting fee attached to some blogging platforms is one of the main reasons why some people question whether you can earn money with Google blogs. Thankfully, you don’t have to shell out to create a Google blog.

Monetising Your Free Google Blog

It’s pretty easy to monetise a blog today, free blogs inclusive. In the early days of the internet, just setting up a blog will cost you thousands of dollars, and monetisation was difficult due to limited options and the fact that most internet services were still in their infancy.

Despite the relative ease of monetising a blog today, most bloggers don’t tap the full monetary potential of their blogs. The reason is that most simply don’t understand or fully understand blog monetisation strategies.

According to reports, most bloggers make as little as $2,400 in their first year, while pro bloggers rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly. You can follow my step-by-step guide on how to create a free Google blog—outlined in the latter part of this article—to get started on your hopefully rewarding blogging adventure. Or, even better, enrol in the Blog Lifestyle Mastery course.

When to Start Monetising Your Free Blog

So, when is the right time to monetise your blog?

It varies by niche and strategy.

Some niches bring more money than others, regardless of your income strategy. The products and services of a particular niche may be multiple times more expensive than those of other niches, generating higher affiliate earnings, pay-per-click, etc.

How Does Your Target Monthly Revenue Influence Monetization?

When to monetise your blog also depends on your target income before monetisation. This requires a little maths.

Let’s say you want the blog to be able to dole out up to $200 a month before you implement a monetisation program. Yes, you read that correctly; free blogs earn money, but there are stringent requirements to meet first.

Assuming you intend to offer a course that costs $10 a month, you need 20 people to buy the course to meet your monthly target. If your readers become habitual visitors and are active with comments, it’s reasonable to say even 100 monthly pageviews will give the target income.

But if your income avenue is Google Ads and you only see 100 visitors monthly, you’re less likely to make $200 from that unless your niche has an incredibly high click-through rate (CTR) and your blog has a reasonable conversion rate. Similar reasoning applies when you rely on affiliate programs for your income.

There’s no free blog that you can’t monetise, but others have less wiggle space, such as being unable to monetise through ads, affiliate marketing, etc. You can use any free blog to advertise your freelancing services or sell courses that readers will buy. You only need to learn how to create a free blog and make money, which I’ll address briefly.

Monetisation Strategies for Free Google Blogs

In this section, I’ll discuss the various ways to monetise a free Google blog. You can choose to implement two or more income streams — the more, the better.

1. Offer a freelance service.

Before starting a blog, it’s believed that you have some knowledge, skill, or experience worth sharing. That will attract people to your blog until they take some desired actions that earn you money. This may be by clicking on ads, buying affiliate promotions, paying for your courses or freelance services, and others.

If you have a great passion for any particular niche, nothing convinces prospective employers like setting up a blog around that passion or writing extensively for websites in that niche. If freelancing is your intended or one of your intended income streams, then focus on a particular niche and publish some of the best content in that vertical.

The Blog Lifestyle Mastery course not only teaches and provides blogging resources but also explains how you can earn money with Google blogs.

Your blog is your portfolio and the best asset for convincing employers, primarily if you collect several client feedback that praises your handwork. I don’t think any seasoned employer will hire you without seeing a good portfolio.

Don’t wait for clients to find your website. There are many ways to reach clients — freelance marketplaces, online forums, QA platforms like Quora, Guest posting, and many others.

2. Join affiliate programs.

Do free blogs earn money with affiliate marketing?

Yes, they do.

Some affiliate programs pay hundreds of dollars for a single sale through an affiliate link.

You’ll see many products and services in your niche with affiliate programs. Once you start receiving visitors, even if you have fewer than 100 visits per month, it’s okay to start promoting affiliate links in your articles.

The income will likely be negligible during the first few months, but your participation will give you experience and insights that will improve your affiliate marketing strategy and skills. You can learn much about affiliate marketing in the Blog Lifestyle Mastery course and use that knowledge to earn hundreds of thousands later.

Some free blogs earn money primarily via affiliate programs, as little as it may seem.

3. Sell books or courses.

Even with just 100 monthly visitors, you can start selling items and services on your free Google blog. Your success with such a monetisation strategy depends on your knowledge and skill in the niche. If you’re an expert who publishes unique, robust content, people will be more willing to buy your books and courses.

Don’t overprice your products and services. It’s good practice to offer discounts to email subscribers or those who comment on your posts. You can host those products on marketplaces like Payhip, Gumroad, Amazon, etc. and link to them from your blog.

If you have an exceptionally loyal fanbase, sometimes you don’t need to write anything unique for your eBooks. Some bloggers just collect and organise all their previous blog posts into a single eBook and ask readers to pay whatever they want for it — quite an easy way for free blogs to earn money.

4. Partner with brands.

After growing a massive readership, try contacting brands about advertising their products. Some will be so desperate to cooperate with you that you’ll get away with charging much higher than you thought possible.

But to get the attention of brands, you must have a relevant and sizable market to which they can advertise their products. This gets more lucrative if you have a significant social media following.

5. Advertise with Google.

This is perhaps the most popular and easiest way to earn money with your free Google blog.

All you have to do is follow the steps outlined by Google to join the AdSense program. Following your account approval, Google will begin to display ads on your blog and pay you per click.

The most significant disadvantage of this method is that you need a lot of traffic to make any reasonable amounts. By following the steps below to grow your blog’s traffic, you should earn a lot from Google AdSense. Combined with the other monetisation options, you may make far more money than you ever thought possible from a free blog.

How to Create a Blog for Free on Google and Earn Money? — A Step-By-Step Guide

Creating a Google blog is quite simple. However, you must adhere to the blogger content policy and terms of service if you want the blog to last long enough to start generating revenue for you.

Here are the basic steps involved in creating a free Google blog:

• Log in with your Gmail to blogger.com.

• At the top left of the screen, click on “Create Your Blog.”

• A title box pops up. Enter the name of your blog and click “Next.”

• Choose a URL for the blog (note that a .blogspot.com extension is added to the address you specify).

• Click on “Save.”

That’s it; you now have a free Google blog.

Your next step is to beautify the blog with themes and other features and start publishing. There are no easier alternatives for free blogs to earn money using Blogger than a good design and publication.

1. Customise the theme.

From the menu list on the left side of your screen, select “Theme.” The default theme for Blogspot is Contempo. You can choose a different one from the many options under the “Themes” menu.

In my opinion, the best themes include Contempo, Essential, Soho, Notable, and Emporio. These are the fastest themes and have virtually the same customisation leeway as the other themes. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insight to test each theme for speed and other factors and settle for the best.

After selecting a theme, click the “Apply” button to implement it.

Since a free blog is what you want, the list of free themes will suffice. While you can customise them to a level of average beauty, the most beautiful Blogspot themes require a one-time purchase.

So, if you were wondering how to create a free blog and make money, now it’s somewhat clear. However, there’s still a lot to discuss.

The HTML editor.

Blogger has an HTML editor with which you can further customise a theme. This editor is tailored towards people with technical skills like coding. It enables further customisation by altering the underlying code of the theme.

The need to self-educate.

No one will teach everything about customising a Blogspot theme in one article. You’ll have to learn by testing and previewing unless you hire a website designer. In fact, some things require online research to understand.

Again, you can’t learn all you need in one day or one week unless you already have experience running or designing websites. However, the good thing is that you mustn’t learn everything before starting to publish.

Do free blogs earn money even without much investment in educating yourself? Highly unlikely unless you were born lucky.

Tip: You can publish a post immediately after a theme is activated. All themes come with a basic design that allows you to publish a post without customising the theme.

2. Confirm search engines’ visibility.

Double-check whether your blog is set to be visible to search engines.

From the menu, click “Settings” and then under “Privacy,” verify that the toggle button is green.

You can access any desired changes through one of the items in the menu, provided such changes are allowed. From Layout to Pages, Comments, and Stats, everything your free blog needs is tucked under one of these menu items.

By following these steps, you’ll barely find the need to ask anyone: how do I create a free Google blog?

3. Begin posting articles.

Posting with Blogger is as easy as sending an email. The post editor has rich formatting features, allowing you to upload images and other files easily. Click “NEW POST” on your Blogger dashboard and then type or copy and paste whatever you want to publish.

Click on the pencil icon at the far left corner of the composer toolbar to change between “text view” and “HTML view” accordingly. The text editor contains all the tools you need to organise your article, insert links, add images, etc.

Make use of these tools like you would any word processing software. This feature allows free blogs to earn money via beautiful text formats.

It’s good to spend time exploring the post editor before you’re ready to publish anything. This will familiarise you with the tool, save time, and maximise formatting when publishing your first and subsequent posts. You can always preview your posts before publishing them.

4. Linking your domains.

You can launch a free blog if you don’t have the money to go premium yet, or because you just want to test the waters. However, a time may come when you’d like to expand the blog’s coverage. This is when you’ll become aware of some anti-income limitations.

At this point, a lot of people and many search engines are already familiar with or used to your free blog. While you can easily refer most visitors to any new website you set up, convincing search engines to transfer your blog’s SEO power to the new website will take time, and some SEO juices will drop along the way. Free blogs earn money but have restricted scalability, which often demands migration.

The best thing would be to link the two domains. It’s not a 100% SEO-friendly migration method, but the process should go through successfully. Moreover, it should result in fewer SEO disadvantages than just attempting to direct visitors and search engines to the new website.

How to Link Your Domains

Linking a Blogger domain to your custom domain is possible, but the steps are a bit technical and slightly different from host to host. You must set up your custom domain in Blogger following these steps before proceeding to your website host and completing the design.

Some website hosting companies have at least one detailed article on how to link your blogger and custom domains. Sometimes these articles are published by third parties. The most important thing is to get the guidance you need.

You should contact your host for instructions if you can’t find a complete article guide. So, it’s clear that “how do I create a free Google blog?” isn’t the only question you’ll be asking about Blogger. Ultimately, you’ll need to scale it via linking or migration.

To succeed financially at free blogging with Blogger, you need to receive enough monthly traffic. There are numerous means of boosting your blog’s traffic. The following sections will describe these processes in considerable detail.

How to Drive Traffic to Your BlogSpot Blog

Here are the most effective ways to drive traffic to your new or old Google blog without just posting on social networks:

1. Use Q&A platforms.

Plenty of free blogs earn money, thanks to Q&A platforms like Quora. This is possible as it allows bloggers to jump-start their website’s traffic and subtly sell services. Quora is getting more than 500 million views monthly; chances are, you’ll find several answerable questions related to your blog’s niche.

Providing helpful answers and linking to your blog is the best strategy for channelling traffic from Quora to your free Google Blog. Just be careful not to post duplicate content or use affiliate links excessively; otherwise, Quora will ban you from posting anything there. An excellent way to avoid this is to read up on the dos and don’ts of Quora before leveraging it for traffic.

Besides pushing traffic to your free Google blog, Quora will also give you quick discovery by search engines. Such accessible traffic sources make it possible to create a free blog and make money in no time.

I think Google somehow discovers the popular contributors and answers on Quora, Reddit, and similar websites that use an internal voting system. If you already have answers on Quora that people are benefiting from, users will start discovering your blog the first day you publish on it.

Suppose Google figures that you are a successful contributor on Quora. In that case, it’ll value the links you share because the assumption is that a helpful personality on Quora won’t usher people to a trashy blog or website. This will be a massive SEO boost for your free blog to earn money.

2. Comment on similar platforms or content.

Identify the largest online communities about your niche that allow commenting. You’ll find that people ask questions, share opinions, and even argue about things you understand. Join the community and share valuable insights without being rude.

Many websites and forums have millions of monthly visits, and most visitors usually read user comments. If you realise that a website receives many comments per blog post, such as 20+ comments, try to be among the first ten people to comment. This is an effective way for free blogs to earn money via diversification of traffic sources.

The lower you drop in the comments string, the less viewership you get. Most websites moderate a linked comment and may ban you or at least censor your posts if you violate linking rules. It’s best to wait until the community knows you before starting to link to your free blog.

3. Guest post on other websites.

Nothing rivals content writing when it comes to the difficulties of managing a website or blog. It’s a challenge that every web admin deals with. Therefore, if you offer someone free and quality content, they’ll likely allow one or two do-follow links to your free Google blog.

This means you can earn money with Google blogs via guest posting - this is an effective content strategy that will allow you to promote your blog and start making money.

As long as “content remains king,” guest posting will never phase out as an effective SEO strategy. Your new Google blog will receive link juice and traffic from websites you guest post on. This is why you mustn’t neglect this strategy.

4. Practice Whitehat SEO.

Discussions on Whitehat SEO require a separate article, but I must mention it because it’s crucial to your blog’s success.

Before you scribble down the first word of an article’s draft, conduct thorough keyword research and then analyse the keywords to develop the best content for readers and Google. I’ll still recommend the Blog Lifestyle Mastery course if you want to learn really fast how free blogs earn money with solid SEO.

Conduct keyword research.

Keyword research is easy, but you can mess it up without correctly judging which keyword groups to target. Since your blog is new and depends on Blogger’s generosity, your SEO position is relatively feeble. But that doesn’t mean you can’t rank naturally for some keywords. 

Choose keywords with a low ranking difficulty even if their monthly search volumes are below 1000. Typically, each main keyword has several variations that may depict slightly different search intents. Combine these keywords in one article and separate them using paragraphs that address each search intent.

One way to find out these different keywords is through Keyword Sheeter.

Carry out keyword analysis.

Now that you’ve collected a list of related keywords, it’s time to see the results Google displays for each.

From the results, you should get a good idea of what Google thinks the search intents are for each keyword. If you think Google is wrong, still cover those search intents but focus on the ones you are sure users want.

Ultimately, free blogs earn money only if Google rightly categorises them.

Craft good titles and meta descriptions.

You’re unlikely to get the title right on your first attempt. But keep analysing Google search results and tweaking the title until you arrive at the best one for both Google and your readers.

Your titles should be descriptive and compelling. Similarly, your meta descriptions should have a solid call-to-action (CTA).

Format your content appropriately.

Nobody wants to read an unorganised wall of text even if it contains the info they want. Give your articles the best design you can.

Use as many formatting tools as possible, including subheadings, bullet points, quotations, italics, bolds, etc., to make the content appealing and skimmable. This will increase the chances of your free blog earning money by having good readability.

Use appropriate images after every 300 words if possible, even if such images are illustrative only. You can use free snipping tools to cut out pictures from websites or utilise free stock images.

Also, include one or two YouTube videos that’ll further enlighten readers.

Should You Create a Free Google Blog?

This depends on your present financial situation and long-term plans for the blog.

Tip: If you struggle with your finances, here’s a blog on how I became financially free.

If you intend to expand massively in the future when the blog succeeds, you might want to go with a paid blog. Again, the Blog Lifestyle Mastery course offers a lot of advantages. Notably, you learn about the blogging craft, including SEO, writing, promotion, monetisation, and more.

In addition to these benefits, you’ll also have free access to all the tools you need to make your blog a success. These include keyword research tools, email software, premium themes, larger disk spaces, and more.

But if you don’t intend to scale up your blogging activity in the future, a free Google blog is all that you need to earn a decent income blogging.

Starting your blogging journey and creating evergreen content is the hardest part, but once you start to get traffic to your blog, it's easy to monetize your blogs.

Conclusion

This lengthy blog has delineated how to create a blog for free on Google and earn money. All you need is to digest the guide and implement the lessons one after the other to start making good money blogging for free with Blogger.

To become a pro blogger earning $100K a year, you need to learn a lot and work extremely smart — emphasis on “smart,” not “hard.” The Blog Lifestyle Mastery course is what I recommend for to-be bloggers because it shortens their learning curve and provides all the resources a blogger needs to make it.

Can I Make Money Blogging About My Life? — A Detailed Guide

You can make thousands of dollars a month blogging about your life as a man — it’s called lifestyle blogging. You’re the central theme, and the blog posts revolve around your past and present experiences, ideas, activities, etc.

This article answers, in great detail, the question: can I make money blogging about my life? I’ll provide satisfactory answers to questions about attaining financial success with a lifestyle blog. You’ll also discover the few critical things to get right when starting a lifestyle blog. All my answers are grounded in reality and backed by scientific, statistical, and social proofs.

Generating Income From a Blog

Before you can make money from any blog, it must have a substantial readership. Therefore, I’ll start by investigating whether people will read lifestyle blog posts. While the short answer to this question is yes, I want to delve deeper to cement your conviction.

Most people asking questions about making money from a lifestyle blog aren’t sure people will spend time reading about another person’s daily activities. And they don’t want to invest in something that might not bring them income. Hence, the quest for answers.

If you have a lot of doubts about lifestyle blogging and its chances of success, I’d suggest you give my Blog Lifestyle Mastery course a shot. Here, I delineate the important secrets that most bloggers won’t reveal to you.

Regarding how many pageviews a blogger needs to get paid, I’ve explained this in the later sections of this article.

Why Will People Read My Lifestyle Blog Posts?

There are many reasons why many people will read your lifestyle stories. Online readers generally seek information and entertainment or simply want to satisfy curiosity. If written properly, your lifestyle articles will satisfy one or more of these needs and attract readers.

Just think about how many people watch vlogs on Youtube. Often, these are just a documentation of some people’s daily lives, so why wouldn’t they also read a lifestyle blog documenting yours?

Here are 17 compelling reasons why people will follow your lifestyle blog.

1. You’re telling a story.

Humans love stories — that’s why folktales are preserved and passed down from generation to generation.

Scientists have long discovered a neurological connection between stories and parts of the brain responsible for empathy, compassion, and cooperation. These are strong emotions, and we know that titles and contents that trigger emotions get the most clicks. The freedom to narrate stories is one of the biggest reasons you can write a blog about your life.

If searchers see your title implying a life experience, they’ll like that content better than expert articles not backed by such experiences. Part of the reason is that it’s a story, not some boring opinion or factual content.

2. You’re writing facts, not fiction.

Every reader wants to spend their time on information they can trust. As shown by many statistical studies, there’s no information readers trust like other people’s experiences and life stories. This is why positive customer reviews drive sales more than anything else.

Simply put, people trust reviews because they’re facts, not fiction. Hence, they’ll be more willing to read your lifestyle blogs because you’re presumably telling the truth, making it rewarding to write a blog about your life.

3. Perhaps they could learn a lesson.

Blog titles about life experiences will draw clicks from even users who may not be undergoing that experience or planning similar actions. The reason isn’t far-fetched — humans love to learn from the successes and failures of others.

If a blog is about your lifestyle, some people will read it just to learn something about your life that may benefit them in the future. Not only can you make money blogging about your life, but you can also help other men in the process.

Let’s say you live a cool lifestyle, earn money or have something about you that other people desire, this could lead to them learning and getting closer to their goals. If they can do this for free by just reading your articles, then you’ll get readers.

4. Your experiences are similar.

While certain people may not be interested in your lifestyle, let alone your daily experiences, many men are likely to read your blog posts that share similar experiences, even if they aren’t currently undergoing that experience. The reason is that it reminds them about what they lived through or are living through. They may also get curious about how you handled it.

5. Your experience is unique.

No two people can have the same experience in any event. So, they can’t read the same experience anywhere else apart from your lifestyle blog.

Don’t misunderstand me, though; I’m not saying no one has ever lived through your kind of event. My point is that many factors influencing that event will differ from anyone else’s. In other words, such uniqueness is a major reason you can make money blogging about your life.

For example, if you travel somewhere new and the citizens greet you with unwelcoming looks, another foreigner there may also receive the same treatment. Despite this, prospective travellers would want to know about your experience and the other person’s because you two will not say the same thing.

That’s why when someone is planning a journey to an unknown location, they would be interested to hear from anyone who’s been there before.

6. Your stories move them.

Sometimes, it’s not that people want to learn from your experience or even be entertained by the story. What you’re telling them may be quite alarming or moving.

Moved by shock, sympathy, or humour, they’ll click your title to read the post. That’s how some people will develop an interest in you and read many other articles you publish. In essence, you can write a blog about your life experiences anytime and still get readers.

A big example of this is my article “how to be financially free” — what man doesn’t want to achieve that? It creates desire and leads to clicks.

7. They’re looking for answers.

Suppose a man is failing to achieve something you already achieved. In that case, he’ll be eager to understand the processes you followed to get where you are. And if he finds your methods effective, he’ll repeatedly visit your blog and most likely interact with you via email or comments.

The benefit of the WordPress dashboard and how easy web hosting is now is you can monetize your blog by just giving people the answers to their questions.

8. They’re simply curious.

Some people have an irresistible urge to learn about people’s lives. In such instances, they’re unlikely to visit your blog for answers or to learn from your experience. Rather, they find reading about other people’s lives entertaining.

Your stories give them conversation points with those around them. It’s easy to write a blog about your life that makes people curious. But your title needs to be intriguing to draw their attention.

9. Similarities in your lifestyles.

Unless someone is completely nuts, there’s no lifestyle they’d pursue passionately in today’s world that millions of people won’t follow or be curious about. For any lifestyle you lead, there are millions like you, and they’re online. They’re either currently living that life, interested in doing so, or simply curious to know more about it.

You and a reader may also adore the same role model. For example, like me, you may be nuts about the British thriller writer Rene Brabazon Raymond, who wrote under many pseudonyms, the most prominent of which is James Hadley Chase.

I like this man’s books, and I’m usually attracted to any online community about his thrillers. Lifestyle similarities like this are one of the main reasons why you can make money blogging about your life.

10. You’re their role model.

Are you extremely good at something that some people try to learn or perfect?

Do you already have a huge online following?

If yes, then there’s a part of your life that will make people interested in you, your story, and your daily lifestyle.

Bringing your daily life online and presenting it correctly might attract a crowd you never dreamed of. People are unbelievably loyal to their role models, and if there’s something you know or do exceptionally well, you can easily be a role model to other people.

One thing here is you can’t come across like a douche — if you’re over flashy and rub it in people’s faces, it’ll turn them away from you. As someone whose lifestyle is of interest to many out there, I developed a comprehensive Blog Lifestyle Mastery course to guide you on how to avoid this mistake and many others.

11. It’s a community of people with a similar lifestyle

Your lifestyle blog will gather like-minded people. This in itself is an incentive that’ll make users regular visitors.

If the community grows and you allow commenting, some users may not spend a day without visiting the blog. Others will likely recommend it to like-minded members of other communities who may not be aware of your blog. Your email list will get longer, and whenever you email users about new articles, many will show up within 24 hours.

Newbies usually wonder what type of blogs make the most money. Well, now you have your answer — it’s usually blogs that are communities of like-minded people.

12. They want honest advice.

Some of the best individuals that people turn to for advice are lifestyle bloggers. Because you live similar lives and your experiences are closely related, you’re in a better position to understand them and more likely to have faced a similar challenge.

On top of that, some of the blog’s community members can provide sound advice based on experience. This is why they’re likely to regularly visit your blog and ask questions there.

13. It’s an autobiography in progress.

Experience is the best teacher, they say. When you experience something, you’ll understand it better than anyone’s explanation. However, if you’ve never experienced an event, your next most precious information will come from other people’s experiences.

This is one of the main reasons autobiographies are popular. Ongoing autobiographies are among the types of blogs that make the most money.

Your autobiography matters too.

It’s not only the autobiographies of great people that are important. You can learn from someone who succeeded or failed at something by just observing their life or hearing about them.

Basically, you, too, tried some things that worked and others that didn’t. Readers will avoid your failed methods and try the successful ones, saving them time, money, and effort.

Many people love autobiographies. 

What you write about specific aspects of your life can serve as a mini-autobiography. Because a lifestyle blog is a biography in progress, many people will be interested in your articles.

There are different benefits of a biography that motivate people to read one, such as promoting self-discovery, etc. Your blog will also provide such benefits. This is why you can easily write a blog about your life since you won’t lack what to share.

14. You won’t get tired of blogging.

A major defeating factor for most bloggers is that they quit along the line due to a lack of motivation.

No blog can succeed without firm dedication by the owner. Writing great posts regularly is feasible if there’s a passion but next to impossible if there isn’t. This is why a lifestyle blog is among those blogs that make the most money, as long as it’s by someone with the ultimate passion for it.

Visitors like blogs and social media channels that receive new content daily because every visit guarantees them something new. If you’re blogging about your passion and have even a handful of visitors to your blog—especially if they engage with the content—you won’t get tired of writing. And this will ultimately encourage continuous visits.

15. You’ll appeal to different personalities.

Not everything about your life will interest a particular reader since you can be many things simultaneously—such as a football fan, an adventurer, a political fanatic, etc.—and can share your experiences about all these interests.

However, some readers will follow your blog because they subscribe to your political views, for example. Regardless, your wide range of interests makes it easy to write a blog about your life at any moment.

On the other hand, you may dislike specific topics like wrestling and want to discourage people from patronising it. While readers who love this sport will disagree with you—perhaps rudely in the comments—like-minded visitors will love to read such blog posts.

16. Less reliance on Google.

You’ll have more advantages over a blog that relies fully on Google for its traffic. Since most people coming to your blog will remember it, they can easily find your blog since they intend to visit again. This advantage will benefit you in many ways.

First, it’ll increase your monthly pageviews. Secondly, it’ll protect you from any negative impact of a Google algorithm update. Thirdly, it’ll build trust in your followers, which will help your affiliate marketing. All of these ultimately help you make money by blogging about your life.

17. Many successful lifestyle blogs abound.

If all the previous reasons don’t convince you that people will follow your blog, this one will. Hence, why it’s listed last.

There are hundreds of successful lifestyle bloggers, many of whom are making at least $5,000 monthly. Some also make over $100,000 per month.

One great example of a successful lifestyle blogger is Martha Stewart. She attained resounding success with what you’re thinking to do — talking about her life and stuff she likes.

Why can’t you join this list? The only thing stopping you is starting.

Why Start a Lifestyle Blog?

Several benefits make starting a lifestyle blog a good idea. The icing on the cake is that you and your readers will benefit.

I’ll discuss only three points here, enough encouragement for you to make money blogging about your life experiences.

1. You’ll benefit someone.

I don’t have to stress this point because I previously emphasised how a lifestyle blog benefits readers. Summarily, people will learn from your mistakes and find answers concerning their lives. Moreover, you’re creating a community of like-minded people that will be happy to help one another.

2. You’ll make money from it.

People are making up to $100,000 monthly from their lifestyle blogs. The average monthly income for some lifestyle bloggers is $5,000, but it can be higher if you dedicate more time and effort.

Your blogging journey will likely start through earning £0, but you can soon find your feet in the lifestyle blog niche through getting your search engine optimization right and picking appropriate affiliate programs.

If you need help with SEO on your Squarespace website, then check out the Squarespace SEO plugin with step-by-step processes to follow to make a profitable blog through organic traffic.

There are many ways to make money blogging about your life experiences. I’ll address that in detail towards the end of this article.

3. You get stuff off your chest.

Blogging can be highly effective for warding off boredom. Plus, you’re unlikely to ever get tired of writing about your daily life.

Joining a community of your lifestyle buddies online will motivate you to try new things, some of which you never knew about. Most importantly, it’ll create an avenue for voicing your ideas and even sharing your grief with thousands of people — an audience you’re unlikely to get in the physical world.

How Soon Can You Make Money off Your Lifestyle Blog?

The many income avenues for a lifestyle blog guarantee you some revenue if people start visiting the blog. As a blogger, the first income I received came from an affiliate sale, and the second was through a guest post.

Many wannabe lifestyle bloggers often ask how many views a blogger needs to get paid. This depends on the monetisation strategy.

Depending on the products or services you promote in your articles, you can make hundreds of dollars monthly from affiliate sales with just 1,000 pageviews a month. But if you limit yourself to Google AdSense, you’ll require at least 10,000 monthly pageviews to make over $100 a month.

I have to admit — a common question I encounter frequently is “how can I earn money off my lifestyle blog in the shortest time possible?” This and many other factors inspired me to create what I tag as the most well-rounded course on the internet for launching a profitable lifestyle blog. Purchasing this course will speed up your blogging success and help you cut costs with the many free tools provided there.

Challenges of Lifestyle Blogging

One of the main challenges of running a lifestyle blog is writing the posts yourself to maintain originality. If someone is ghostwriting your blog posts, you may lose the authenticity that people follow you for. This means your blog will no longer be an autobiography but a heterobiography, which rarely reflects originality.

Life story blogs typically have another weakness that, if not overcome, can kill it. This weakness is their reliance on the reader’s emotions, which compels you to write thought-provoking titles for each post.

These are the two most important reasons why many people fail to make money blogging about their life experiences.

How to Start a Lifestyle Blog

Lifestyle blogging isn’t hard if you get the right resources and coaching.

Here are the steps to take when starting a lifestyle blog:

1. Choose a niche.

Your strongest passion is the best niche for your lifestyle blog. You can focus on fashion, diet, health & fitness, hobbies, travel, finances, home decor, and many more.

To ease your niche selection process, I’ve put together the Blog Lifestyle Mastery course to help you discover your biggest passions and monetisation opportunities.

2. Choose a suitable name.

Pick something that rhymes with your lifestyle and is easy to remember.

I’ll strongly discourage you from using free hosting platforms that add an extension to your blog’s name. This is because they mess up your unique website identity and derail your SEO (search engine optimisation) when you decide to get rid of the extension.

This begs the question: how can I make money blogging about my life experiences with an unmemorable URL?

Since you intend to monetise the blog someday, you ought to set it up in a way that allows you to scale it when the time comes.

Free blogging platforms like Blogspot, Wix, WordPress, etc., offer limited wiggle space for scaling and monetisation. Using the free hosting and scaling resources provided in the Blog Lifestyle Mastery will be a great advantage.

3. Use the right hosting platform.

You can run your lifestyle blog smoothly with many website hosts. But many factors make some more suitable for a lifestyle blog than others.

Key among these factors for a lifestyle blog include the costs and support for newbies like you. Website hosts without any dedicated programs for lifestyle bloggers can’t give you much support specific to this space.

The Blog Lifestyle Mastery course is a great option for newbie lifestyle bloggers as it provides all the training and resources necessary to make money blogging about your life experiences.

4. Be specific when starting out.

Your blog’s peculiarity sets it apart from others, especially in its infancy.

Don’t discuss different subjects on your blog. For example, don’t talk about a shoe you bought today and a burger you ate yesterday because burgers and shoes have nothing in common, and Google doesn’t favour unspecified websites.

This is called “topic authority” - if you stick to one topic, you’ll be known for being an expert in it and Google will rank you higher.

I’m not saying you should limit your blog to one aspect of your lifestyle. But if your blog is relatively new, this is the best approach for SEO.

Why’s this so?

No matter how interesting your stories are, if your posts don’t rank well on Google, all your efforts will come to nought. While you can write a blog about your life based on any experiences, having specific categories will increase your readership.

How to Manage a Lifestyle Blog

Before you publish anything, ask yourself how it’ll benefit the reader. Don’t just write anything that comes to your mind unless you have an intended benefit for the reader. It’s good to mention this benefit directly or indirectly, preferably at the beginning of the article.

Here are key tips that’ll help you manage your lifestyle blog excellently:

1. Do SEO research for each post.

No matter how spectacular your post is, Google must categorise and rank it before it can benefit your blog.

Do in-depth keyword research to understand how people look for your type of content and the type of articles that Google displays for relevant queries. Talk about any stuff you like or dislike, but always use the words and phrases people use to search for such content.

If you follow a particular diet and want to talk about it, research the internet first to know what people are searching for about that diet. You’ll discover some of their questions are about things you have already experienced, and you can confidently answer such and related questions.

Summarily, since a blogger needs many pageviews to get paid, strong SEO is mandatory for success.

2. Post titles must imply experience.

From your post title, let it be clear to the reader that this content is NOT based on research but on experience. Unless you’re a renowned expert in the field, people will rather hear from someone with experience.

This post about my experience with a Vitabiotics Multivitamins formula is a great example of an article with an experience-reflecting title. It has the title “How Vitabiotics Changed My Opinion on Multivitamins Forever.” This is a more befitting title than say “Are Vitabiotics Multivitamins Worth It?”

3. Learn to narrate your stories well.

No one dislikes a good story that’s well expressed. For that reason, choose events in your life that you find interesting, but always have a purpose for sharing such experiences.

You can narrate past events to entertain, warn, or encourage your readers. For example, you could warn readers about pitfalls when trying to learn a particular skill.

Proper expression is key to hooking readers, and you can perfect that skill with the Blog Lifestyle Mastery course.

4. Never lie in your posts.

Don’t lie to your readers or fans, no matter what.

Some people will be so interested in your life that they’ll read virtually everything you post online. And if you contradict yourself even once, especially with obvious lies, the reader may think you spin lies just to publish something.

This will hurt your loyal followers. Such readers will begin to doubt your stories, and nobody wants to keep reading an author they can’t trust.

5. Think before you write anything.

No matter what, some people will dislike the entire blog or a particular article you wrote. Internet trolling is something all celebrities grapple with.

Once you have a popular lifestyle blog, be ready for some hate speech from your personality counterparts. You can write a blog about your life on any subject, but don’t make inappropriate statements.

6. Put up posts regularly.

There are many reasons why people follow celebrities. Some are just curious to peek into the celebrity’s life. Listening to people’s stories is something they love very much, even if they lead different lifestyles.

The moment they discover your blog is regularly updated with interesting life events, they’ll keep coming to read your articles. Try your best to post daily because there’s no disadvantage to that besides the stress.

If a fan visits your blog twice or more without seeing anything new, they’ll be disappointed and won’t visit regularly.

How Can I Make Money Blogging About My Life?

Once you grow a loyal following, monetising that popularity is the juicy part.

The best way to generate income from your blog is through affiliate marketing or partnering with brands. You can also join advertising networks or sell ad spaces.

Moreover, some lifestyle bloggers write their complete autobiographies and ask readers to pay anything they want for it.

According to research, nothing convinces people to buy like reviews — a staggering 92.4% of B2B buyers tend to make a purchase after reading a trusted review.

If your readers trust you to always tell the truth, they’ll gratefully buy whatever you recommend, especially if it concerns something they’re planning towards.

Departing Words

There you have it — more than enough answer to the question: can I make money blogging about my life?

In summary, you’ll do a lot of work if you want your blog to rise quickly; otherwise, you’ll blog for a year or more without making a dime from it. Every aspect of your life will have an online community of like-minded people talking about it. These communities will help greatly, especially when your blog is new.

Engaging with online communities will help channel traffic to your blog. And if you do a good job blogging, most newcomers will become regular visitors and even share your posts. The Blog Lifestyle Mastery is a great opportunity for new lifestyle bloggers to fast-forward their progress as it teaches all the skills you need and provides the necessary resources.

Scotland whiskey tour itinerary | Visiting Annandale

So I just got back from the lowlands. What a weekend that was! This quick-fire article is going to detail my Scotland whiskey tour itinerary and how you can enjoy your own trip to its fullest. It’ll also include a mini-breakdown of my new favourite place - Annandale Distillery. I think you’re gonna enjoy this one.

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What to expect on a whiskey tour

This is a question I’ve had a lot since I posted about my whiskey tour on Instagram. In a nutshell, you can expect to be given an in-depth insight into the whiskey making process, the history of the particular distillery you’re visiting and then lots of lovely samples of the goods.

We got tasters of peated, non-peated, single malts, blends and even some newer whiskies that hadn’t been brought to market yet. The whiskies get progressively tastier too…I wonder why? 🥴

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Best whiskey distillery in Scotland

Obviously this one is completely subjective, but I can wholeheartedly recommend Annandale Distillery as one to put on your whiskey distillery bucket list. A tour of the whole distillery complete with about 5 or 6 samples is only £15! Bloody insane value. It only goes on for an hour though, so if you want to make a day/weekend of things, be sure to book some other stuff in.

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Make a weekend of it

When I went, we stayed in Carlisle which is nearby, allowing us to enjoy a bit more of the surrounding area without having to get blacked out on whiskey. If you find a cool place on AirBnB you’re sorted. I got one with a fully kitted out gym too to stay on top of my game.

Specifically, we stayed right at the end of Hadrian’s Wall which is absolutely fascinating and meant there was tonnes of people coming through who had just walked the whole thing (which is 84 miles btw). These people usually have some cracking stories too.

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I ended up talking with a couple of old blokes from South Carolina who had come over to walk the wall and drink our pints. Apparently UK booze is infinitely better than America’s.

Good idea for me to invest in British whiskey then, eh? Shoutout to VCL Vintners for that.

Travelling in style

If you’re gonna be visiting the Scottish countryside (where most distilleries are) then you’re probably not going by public transport. If you’re like me and live in the city centre where cars just aren’t needed, you have an opportunity.

All that dead money and stress avoided by walking everywhere, means that when the opportunity arises for a trip like this, I can go all out and get an absolutely baller car with absolutely no hassle.

Take it for the weekend, have the insurance, maintenance, loan repayments and everything else handled by the company and when Sunday comes, give it back with no stress whilst having all the upside of a £120k super SUV!

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I chose to go with Prestige Car Hire for this filthy little Range Rover SVR. All black, from the exterior, through to the interior, my clothing and even my bottle of coke lmao.

This thing was absolutely ludicrous.

If you have the spare money and want to make your whiskey distillery trip a real weekend to remember, I can’t recommend this enough.

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Whiskey tour itinerary

So here is your TL;DR whiskey tour itinerary list:

• Rent a sick car to travel in (100x’s the experience, trust me).

• Book your distillery tour tickets in advance.

• Have some skin in the game. It makes the experience more immersive knowing you have your own cask at that very distillery.

• Set a couple of hours aside and then plan a weekend around it. There’s nothing worse than coming to the end of the tour and not having anything else to do!

• Have a designated driver for after the tour…unless you want to sleep in the car park.

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Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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What Does a High-Value Man Want in a Woman

Dating is never straightforward, especially when the term “value” comes into the picture. I was recently asked by one of my friends, “what does a high-value man want in a woman” - she knew I wrote this blog (which is, of course, filled with high-value men 😉), so I thought I’d speak to some of my friends and readers, to create the go-to guide on the traits of high-value men and how to attract one.

Note: This article is not a checklist of traits you need to have in your personality. It is simply a guideline on becoming better at attracting high-value men. It would be best if you didn’t try to change who you are as a person. 

To get a relationship, you should be yourself, not anyone else. The following information will give you some pointers about things that high-value men are generally attracted to.

This blog was contributed by Rough Water Media.

Introduction: What is a High-Value Man? The Traits of a High-Value Man

So what is a high-value man? A high-value man is a man who is authentic, emotionally intelligent and has a purpose with every single thing he does - whether that be in his relationships, career or fitness.

Below I have added six traits of a high-value man - if you disagree with any of my points or would like to add any, feel free to contact me or follow me, and we can disagree via message.

#1 Looks After Himself

No, he won’t be the only one shining among a group of other men and blinding you with his 10/10 smile. So put: if he cares about himself, he knows how to take care of others.

He understands the importance of taking care of your body and mind. One of a high-value man’s traits is their ability to avoid addictive substances, like drugs or alcohol, and a lack of obsessive behaviour like over-eating. On top of this, he probably works out, looks after his mental health, invests in himself and has a routine he follows.

#2 Assertiveness

An attractive trait of a high-value man is his assertiveness. High-value men know what they want and how to get it. He won’t accept anything less than what he deserves. He is thoughtful and intentional, especially when it comes to relationships.

Although a high-value man may not ask a woman what she brings to the table, he is most likely taking notes on her presentation of herself, her manners and her behaviour.

For example, I’m never going to be quizzing a girl on her values, but if she is rude or doesn’t know her worth, that isn’t for me, unfortunately.

#3 Self-Awareness

It’s not uncommon to see somebody jumping into a task they have no knowledge of or understanding of the job. As a result, they might struggle to finish it or not do a good job. High-value men don’t do this, as they know what they’re capable of and what they’re not. He is not shy about admitting if he doesn’t know something and is always eager to learn.

Quality guys and high-quality men tend to be quite humble, based on the people I have spoken to. While they may have strong business personalities (like I get across here quite often), when they’re at home and with a woman, they will be level headed - which takes us onto the 4th trait of a high-value man.

#4 Doesn’t Comfort to “Manliness” Standards

I don’t particularly like the term, but there is a level of “toxic masculinity” in some men - some feel a constant need to be the biggest lad in the room and will make a dick out of themselves to get their friends to crack up.

A high-value man doesn’t conform to this - they realise that having more “feminine” emotions is also very important, and they don’t need a dick-swinging contest to know their self worth compared to other men. They are in touch both emotionally and spiritually and aren’t afraid to show it.

This is one of the critical traits of masculine men and makes it worth asking the question, “what does a high-value man want from a woman” - these men can be hard to come by and have levels to their game of life.

#5 Growth is the Game

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. High-value men don’t care where they are now - yes, they may already have a level of success, but they aren’t constantly comparing themselves to others to determine whether they’re winning. Instead, their growth mindset keeps them focused on the bigger picture as they build an empire, not short term wins as they flash the cash on Instagram.

A high-value man may be building multiple businesses or a strong career - something that allows them to be stable and create something in the long term - I have found that high-value men are aware of compounding; they know that they need to improve 1% every day.

When we talk about growth, it’s not just about financial gain - high-value men may be experimenting with their mental or physical performance through the benefits of saunas. They may also be looking to become financially free or a digital nomad.

#6 He doesn’t cry over spilt milk

Look, shit happens, and you have to deal with it sometimes; that’s life, unfortunately! To do this, high-value men have a level of emotional intelligence that allows them to deal with life’s problems.

Sure, grief can impact everyone, and it’s necessary and understandable to mourn a loss. Still, someone who’s emotionally mature will not let lose too much of their joy in life.

High-value men will often be the type to always look towards the next challenge. They can start moving forward quite soon after a setback because they are always looking to improve and keep pushing themselves towards bigger and better achievements in their lives.

High-value Men Need High-value Women

I believe this one-liner could sum up this blog at a fundamental level: “high-value men need high-value women”. I say this because most high-value men are not as interested in dating a woman who does not value herself or simply a woman who is using them for her own selfish needs.

Look at it the opposite way. Would a high-value woman steep to a man who doesn’t respect himself, doesn’t treat her right and doesn’t have a long term vision for how he wants his life to be? Maybe in the short term, but in the long term, a high-value man who can give her what she wants will always come out on top.

A Guide on How to Attract a High-value Man

This guide is for women who want to find a high-value man and start a relationship. I will give a list of three things that you can do to attract and keep them:

• Be a team player: High-value men aren’t superheroes - they will have lows as big as their highs. They will need someone to be there for them, just as they will want to be there for you. Team players look to be there for their team and grow to something bigger - high-value men will find this very attractive, as opposed to a damsel in distress who may just be looking for attention.

• Be confident and know what you want: Don’t be hard on yourself - you don’t need to keep track of “growth and profits” with pie charts. You need a general idea of what you want and how to get there. Men generally notice confidence and charisma when they meet a woman, which are qualities that help them know she is worth their time.

• Be able to spend time on your own: High-value men may often be off doing their own thing, whether working on their own business, career or personal life. They will need a woman who can easily spend time on her own, building her empire. Needy women will drain his energy and take away from his other priorities, which is a big no for high-value men.

  Contrary to what some people may say, high-value men do not want a woman who will be there for them at all times at his beck and call - they want a woman with a lot going on and dreams she wants to hit for herself outside of her relationship.

Taken while I was working on this blog!

Frequently Asked Questions

• What makes a man high-value?

A high-value man doesn’t chase things— he focuses on becoming the type of man who deserves those things. That goes for partners, career opportunities and everything else in between - he will constantly be looking for self-improvement.

• What does a high-value man look like?

A high-value man doesn’t have to look a certain way. From my experience, a high-value man can be pretty inconspicuous but can also be what you would classify as a ‘stereotypical’ high-value man, i.e., tall, dark, and handsome. You’d be surprised on the variation in what women find attractive in men.

• How do men stay high-value?

High-value men stay high-value by maintaining their core values and mastering the moment. As a result, they don’t get distracted by short-term gains; they constantly look at the bigger, more positive picture and move towards their long-term goals.

• What is the most attractive quality in a man?

Women are more attracted to men who have a pleasant, approachable, average look and a strong sense of humor when looking for a long-term relationship. Of course, there will always be a bias towards more “masculine” men with symmetrical features, a strong jawline and great hair, but this doesn’t always tick the attractive box for women who are looking for a high quality man or good guys.

• How to date a high-value man?

Ultimately, the best way to date anyone is by just being yourself. For dating high-value men, you may need to be confident, a team player and able to spend time by yourself outside of your dating life.

Conclusion on High-value Men

I’m just a guy with an opinion, as are the people I spoke to in the lead up to this blog. However, as with any dating advice, particularly “how to get a man/woman” articles, no one will be able to give you the secret sauce on how to get the person you want.

If you’d like some more relationship advice from a couple’s point of view, I’d recommend getting in touch with the A Couple Things To Do Team - they’ve shared some golden tips recently, including what to talk about on a first date with someone you already know (here).

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How to become financially free

How do I become financially free?

It’s a question I used to ponder a lot without really trying to do anything about it. I knew what it meant to be financially free - make enough money to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it. Make that money from anywhere and never have anyone tell you what to do. Ever.

I knew I wanted it, and I knew I had to find a way.

Fast forward 5 years and I have done exactly this, freeing myself from the 9-5 rat race and making more money than I know what to do with - all at the tender age of 26. Do you know how powerful that feeling of TOTAL freedom is?

It’s something only a few will ever experience.

But you can.

I’m not here to sell you anything, I just want you to realise your potential.

So this blog post is going to outline absolutely EVERYTHING that has ensured I live each and every day to its fullest, maximising my output, my time and my wealth creation.

You can pick at this list like a buffet. No need to do it all, but maybe build up with 4 or 5 and add a new one every week or two. When you are doing every single one of these consistently every day, you simply won’t recognise the person who you once were.

I know I did.

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START USING GOOGLE CHROME

This is a non-negotiable if you are serious about optimising your life. Safari is absolutely god awful.

Not sure of the capabilities of Mozilla Firefox, Duck Duck Go or whatever weird browser you may use, but Chrome allows for lots of amazing extensions, which leads me onto…

DOWNLOAD UNHOOK FOR YOUTUBE

I have been using this for at least 6 months now. It gets rid of your suggestions, home feed, sidebars and all other bullshit that sucks you down rabbit holes of pointless nonsense. You can still click your subscriptions but it will really take the addictiveness out of YouTube. It's insane how much this cut my pointless YouTube watching time.

DOWNLOAD FEED ERADICATOR

Another game changer. This gets rid of every social media feed on desktop. Instagram, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. This will again free up another one or two hours of your day and stop you getting sucked into comment sections, tangents and other stupid stuff that ruins deep work.

DELETE INSTAGRAM

Go ghost mode for at least a month and see how you feel. You will realise how much time we truly spend checking stories, feeds, reels, explore page and just doing meaningless bullshit. This will free up at least 2 hours of your day.

I have written about this at length here.

DON'T WATCH TV OR MOVIES AND DON’T PLAY VIDEO GAMES

If you're serious about winning your day, you can gain an extra 2 to 3 hours just by not consuming mind numbing content. How dare you think that you can play video games and watch TV for dozens of hours every single week whilst being productive?

I used to think maybe you could strike some sort of balance, but it’s just not possible. Your brain will never focus on problems to overcome in business and life because it’s too busy thinking about all that dopamine-laden entertainment that you fill your head with.

Grow up.

HAVE A SET SCHEDULE

Get up and go to bed at the same time every day. Know at what time you will eat, brush your teeth, do your hair, have a shower - absolutely every second needs to accounted for.

By doing this, you reduce the fatigue placed on your brain. If your clothes are ready to go from the night before, you know at 7:05 you take a pee and at 8:00 you sit down to work then these things become automatic and your mind registers them as non-negotiable.

Even when you don't want to do them, you just simply *do* because that's what you do. To not do these things would be as weird as not walking.

Run your life like clockwork and the results will come in every aspect of your being.

TURN ALL NOTIFICATIONS OFF ON YOUR PHONE

Why even have them on?

I have calls on. Everything else I need to physically go into the app to check. That's it. If you don't go in to check, how important are those notifications really?

By doing this, you reduce the allure of your phone. It's not constantly reeling you in with red dots and it allows you to develop momentum without needless distractions.

SIDENOTE

So you can see the above are all based around optimising your time and making your day as long as possible. By cutting out all of this stuff that saps your attention, you can genuinely gain up to 6 or 7 hours of dedicated focus time back. Imagine that compounded over just one week? If you put the work in every weekend (and don't fall victim to the calendar effect like a civilian moron) then imagine how that compounds over a month? A year? In 5 years you'll be so far ahead of your peers you won't even be able to see them.

You'll be so far in the stratosphere of success that they will be infinitesimal little specs of dust.

GET A BUSINESS, GIVE IT A NAME, DEVELOP A WEBSITE AND SECURE A DOMAIN & EMAIL

This is the fun part. Develop a sick business idea, give it a name and make it real by getting a site, domain and associated email (and pro signature to adorn all outbound emails).

To become who you want to become, you need to look the part. A website and online identity for your professional life does this with aplomb.

Also, if you ever need a site. Head here.

PITCH TWICE A DAY, EVERY DAY

Your ideal client doesn't exist on one time zone. Pitch in the morning and in the early evening. Make it easy for them to talk to you by including a Calendly link.

This pitch has been BUSSIN for me of late. Keep it simple, show them the work and make it as smooth as possible to discuss further:

"Hi,

{NAME} here. I’d love to {WHATEVER SERVICE YOU PROVIDE} for you. As an {WHAT ARE YOU?}, I can guarantee a flawless service.

You can find my full portfolio at {PORTFOLIO LINK} but I’ve picked a few examples I think you’ll like below:

LINK TO EXAMPLE 1

LINK TO EXAMPLE 2

LINK TO EXAMPLE 3

If you want to discuss things in more depth, please book in for a call at a time that works for you here: {CALENDLY LINK}”

Make it even easier for YOU by including all the places you pitch every day in a Trello card.

For your reference, here are the links to places I pitch that reside in my personal Trello:

• Peopleperhour.com

• Dribbble.com

• Behance.net

• 99designs.co.uk

• Worksome.co.uk

• Linkedin.com

• Upwork.com

• Facebook.com

I would recommend looking for lots of other platforms too such as Freelancer. This is one area where spreading yourself thinly is a good idea. I caught one of my biggest on Worksome and haven't had a client there since, but because I was on there every day I managed to snag them. Imagine you do that across every platform every day. You might snag 3 clients a week that you would have otherwise missed because you weren't putting yourself in the right shop window and forcing the initiative.

Optimise your online profiles

Your website, LinkedIn, People Per Hour, UpWork, Behance, Dribbble, etc. All of these profiles need to be a coherent narrative that describes who you are, what you do and why you're the best.

Don't you dare be humble here.

Clients want THE best and THE best doesn't talk themselves down.

I guarantee if you don't talk about how amazing you are, someone else will do about themselves and they'll be the ones getting the clients.

Be confident.

USE LINKEDIN LIKE YOUR DIARY

Just post win after win. Jazz up how big it is, it doesn't matter if it's not - just make it sound like it is.

You may think people aren't watching, but they are. You'll also need to optimise your profile to be found by people looking for your service. Make sure it’s clear what you do and that you are available for hire. Commit to being one thing and be it. Don’t have a jack of all trades vibe going on. No self-respecting client will ever hire you if you present yourself like this.

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learn more about How I became financially free and how you can too

If you want to find out how I became a digital nomad using this blog and how you can do exactly the same thing, check out my course here. For more information about how to free yourself, check out the video below 👇

Or if you want to jump ahead, feel free to skip this.

It teaches you everything you’ll need to create a successful blog, freeing yourself from the 9-5 and allowing you to travel the world for free, making crazy money whilst doing it.

What are you waiting for?

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PROFESSIONALISE YOUR ENTIRE WORKFLOW

Onboarding form > Proposal / Contract > Deposit > Deliver > Final payment > Handover

This is how your workflow should look. You should set up a Google form to get all the info you need from your client.

Then you should send over a proposal/contract document that outlines what you will deliver. It should be mocked up in Canva and sent via Signwell which is a free e-signature software. This covers you and the client.

Once this is signed, send over a professional invoice. Bite the bullet, pay for a professional bookkeeping subscription and use their invoicing tool. This ensures zero mistakes can be made and looks extremely professional.

Deliver your work with a watermark somehow. Google how top players in your industry do this to see how you can supply work that you still have jurisdiction over. You don't EVER want a client to take the work and bail on payment. Always have your power play so they pay on time.

Then when they pay, you can deliver it to them via your project hub, which you should always set up for new clients to encourage repeat work. You can repurpose my project hub here.

JOIN FB GROUPS

Join some that are based around your industry, offering free advice to those looking for it and look around for people requesting paid help or recommendations.

INVEST IN SOFTWARE

If you know of software that will help cut your working time down and allow you to pump out more projects then do it.

PAY FOR A COURSE

Further down the line, but one to keep in mind. Up-skilling yourself and learning from the very best in the world will be invaluable.

I’ve invested in around 4 courses so far and each has propelled me to a different level in some way or another. Sometimes you will just get one beautiful little nugget of info that changes the game.

This is what makes courses so valuable to those who want to be the best at what they do.

DO IT EVERY DAY

Don't go balls to the wall one day and then take the next off. Even if you feel lazy, just do the easy stuff. Pick that low hanging fruit and box your admin off. Add portfolio pieces across your site and online profiles - just at least tick some boxes and you can go to bed knowing you moved the needle forward. If not directly that day, then for future you.

If you do this every day for even just a month you will be a completely different animal.

Most of all, you need to believe you are that guy.

Become who you always knew you were.

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Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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How to travel the world for free

If you’ve followed me and the blog for any length of time, you’ll know I’ve done my fair share of travelling. You’ll also know that I’d done a lot of it for free. Well, not free. I had to put A LOT of work in and gave value back. But in monetary terms, nothing left my wallet.

Examples can be found here, here and here.

To do this, there are two options.

Both require you to start your very own blog. Here’s how to do it.

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Option 1 - Pitch, pitch, pitch

Your first option is the most straightforward. Create yourself a blog. I recommend setting up something super easy on Squarespace. Populate this with lots of content focused on the sort of niche you want to target. If you’re looking to get free travel, then having lots of city guides and activity reviews is a good way to go.

Once that’s done, you’ll need to tick the following boxes:

Leverage

The easiest way to do this is to have your blog generating a decent amount of traffic (5k per month is fine to start) or to have an Instagram account with a good amount of followers. These two together are more powerful than just one alone.

Outreach

You’ll need to reach out to the tourist board of the place you want to visit. If you want to visit Tokyo for example, reach out to their tourism board and pitch to have them fly you out, source your accommodation and rustle up an itinerary.

In return, they will get some fantastic coverage that will generate more business for their city. This is the trade. You are providing immense value to them and in return, they are showing you the best of what their city has to offer.

Deliver

If you continue to deliver for these places, creating fantastic content and delivering value, you can show this to more and more tourist boards as proof of concept and snowball your operation. In fact, you could be hitting a new place every weekend if you pitch your socks off.

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Option 2 - Post, post, post

So your second option is a bit more nuanced because you’ll have to get yourself an accountant (unless you’re pretty hot with your numbers).

With this option, you simply just pay for everything, but make sure you post about it incessantly.

This way, you should be able to make a case to the tax man that these purchases are wholly and necessarily for business purposes.

This is not financial advice so bear that in mind.

You can learn more about all the cool stuff bloggers may be able to get through on their expenses using this link: https://www.keepertax.com/tax-write-offs/social-media-influencer

Tag & CTA

If you’re leaving town for work then your travel and accommodation is expendable. Tag the places you’re staying, the airlines you’re using and make sure you always leave a call to action for viewers and readers so they can take a look at these companies.

That way, your expenses can be claimed because you are genuinely driving traffic and business for these places.

Pay correctly

Pay with your business card. This way, all expenses are going through your business and it’s all recorded correctly. You want everything to be completely above board. So whilst you have to pay up front initially, you can claim all of this back off your profits at the end of the year, meaning instead of lining some government official’s pockets, you’ve had the time of your life ✈️

Submit

Submit your taxes via an accountant. This is always the safest and most effective way to double-check your expenses and ensure it’s all submitted 100% legally and efficiently.

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LEARN MORE ABOUT EXACTLY HOW I TRAVEL FOR FREE

If you want to find out how I became a digital nomad using this blog and how you can do exactly the same thing, check out my course here. For more information about how to free yourself, check out the video below 👇

It teaches you everything you’ll need to create a successful blog, freeing yourself from the 9-5 and allowing you to travel the world for free, making crazy money whilst doing it.

What are you waiting for?

---

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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The weird art of sauna networking

Here’s something you’ve probably never thought about. Networking in the sauna. Well I’m here today to let you into this strange little networking secret that I recently discovered. Are you ready?

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A bit of background

I was sat in the sauna the other day chatting away with a few guys and it dawned on me. Has anyone every thought of the insane stealth-networking potential of this situation? If you’ve ever been in the sauna for any prolonged period of time, you’ll know that eventually, you’ll get chatting to whoever you’re in there with.

The type of person in a sauna

If that person you get chatting to happens to be a fellow entrepreneur, it’s essentially an elevator pitch on steroids.

Think about it.

High level guys care about their health more than most. If your gym has a sauna then it’s probably quite a high end facility. A plethora of health conscious, wealthy members means an increased chance of chatting (in a very personal setting) with a business owner for a fair amount of time. Not just a quick 15-second pitch.

An example

For instance yesterday, the two guys I was talking to both turned out to be businessmen in my area. One owned some bars in the city and the other owned a few barbershops.

Guess what? Both their businesses had websites that needed some major work. I told them a bit about what I do and booked a couple of meetings in there and then. In a sauna. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. A great workout, followed by ninja-closing some potential clients whilst sweating out toxins.

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Next time you’re sweating your balls off, maybe ask that guy next to you what he does for a living. You never know who you might meet.

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

You may also like

How To Be A Nomad With No Money - A complete guide

So you want to be digital nomad? This blog will teach you how to be a nomad with no money and working remotely.

A guy in one of the private communities I’m a member of recently asked me how it was that I got started in ‘digital nomad-ing’ and how I actually make my money. Whilst I gave him a brief breakdown of things he could be doing, I thought it would be good to expand this out into a longer post that might help some of you blokes out - as this covers exactly how I made money as a nomad before I had money.

This isn’t a guide on money-making schemes. It’s more aimed at income-generating skills that give you enough money to live well whilst allowing you to be location independent AND scale if you so wish.

I’ll make a list of each and ideas on how to scale. They’re all intentionally low barriers to entry, so anyone can at least try these and begin living the digital nomad lifestyle while traveling the world as a remote worker.

🚨 A quick FYI - a lot of the scaling options are similar. Most scaling solutions are the same across all industries so I am repeating myself a little bit. But hopefully they just hammers the point home even more.

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How to become a digital nomad?

If you want to find out how I became a digital nomad using this blog and how you can do exactly the same thing, check out my course here. For more information about how to free yourself, check out the video below 👇

It teaches you everything you’ll need to create a successful blog, freeing yourself from the 9-5 and allowing you to travel the world for free, making crazy money whilst doing it.

What are you waiting for?

---

Copywriting

This is one of the lowest barriers to entry in the freelance trade. If you can write in any guise, you can be a copywriter. Sites like Fiver, UpWork and People Per Hour are making this easier than ever. You can write copy for ads, daily content for sites (I used to write 10 articles PER DAY for the largest forex business in the UK and their sister companies), long-form SEO-optimised guides, brand guidelines - the list goes on and on. There’s also no ceiling for copywriting. If you are good enough, you may end up writing for huge publications such as the Esquire or GQ.

It’s different for service providers such as web developers who have to be proficient in many different design languages. If you only know CSS and Squarespace for instance, you’ll never design Nike’s new website. But if you are an excellent copywriter, you may well design the slogan that adorns the homepage.

This is THE freelance gig to get into if you want to be a digital nomad asap.

How to scale?

• Up your rates.

• Take copywriting courses.

• Train a team up and have them write articles for you. Especially useful for spin pieces where you are just repurposing existing content to pad out news sites.

Translation

The overwhelming majority of those outside the UK, US, Canada & Australia, etc. speak English very well. So automatically you are extremely qualified in a very niche industry that those in the countries mentioned don’t really have access to. This can be done anywhere in the world!

You can start off doing translation gigs on jobs boards and one day after amassing an excellent reputation, you may find yourself translating for huge foreign sports stars or being the go-between in crunch talks between the UK and France. This is another opportunity with absolutely no ceiling as long as you really brush up on the languages you speak and all of their idiosyncrasies.

How to scale?

• Up your rates

• Take linguistics courses

• Find people similar to you in your area with an interest in language. Create a team that are similar to yourself but with different strengths. For example, some excel in high pressure environments and some like to do their translation behind a screen for article proofs. Once built out, you can manage this team. Being from a similar area you can have solid rapport and eventually you can hire a general manager to step in and let it run itself.

Web design

This is my main income source now and it is EASY to do. If you utilise low-code platforms such as Squarespace and Wix you can create beautiful sites that are easy to manage for your clients and that they are willing to pay mega money for. Take some additional courses, read around online and build your portfolio. In next to no time, you’ll be easily making dream-level income.

How to scale?

• Up your rates

• Hire a junior designer

• Use templates to free up more time for more clients

• Slowly build a team and remove yourself as the bottleneck

Graphic design

For graphic design, you might have to have some level of artistic inclination. But it can definitely be learnt. The Adobe suite is so much more accessible to all skill levels now making it easier than ever to get to grips with pro-level software. If you’re really looking at being a digital nomad, the graphic design route would be fruitful, as you can do a lot of it from an iPad meaning it takes pretty much zero room in your bag/case. Imagine being able to make 6-figures from this tiny little screen that slots inside your backpack whilst sunning your balls in Bali? Ideal.

How to scale?

• Download professional programs from Adobe or learn how to do work faster on Canva - this is a great nomad jobs for beginners

• Take a course or 2. This is quite an important step for graphic design as skill is very important.

• Develop a workflow

• And again, build yourself a team when the work stacks up too high. Artists come from every single country in the world, so you may be able to find a world-class graphic designer who is willing to work for 15% of what you would actually charge a client. Give them a 5% tip, keep them onside and you’ve got yourself a money printing machine.

English teaching

A bit more hands on, but if you speak English well, you can travel to whatever country you want and get a job teaching English to classes or private students. A lot of rich families will pay to have their child tutored by English speakers. I had a friend who taught English to Russian royalty 😳 and another friend who lived with a German family rent-free whilst also being paid, just for teaching their kid English for 2 hours per day.

If you crave even more freedom from teaching English, you can do it via zoom to classes or privately. This is an even more viable option thanks to corona and helps to expand your target market to pretty much anywhere around the world.

How to scale?

• Up your rates.

• Market your services and teach to larger classes.

• Build an online English academy. Learning softwares are making this quite a viable option now.

• Same as above, but pre-recorded. If you build an English-learning course with a high success rate you’ll have a passive income for life with very minimal admin.

Blogging and Freelance Writing

As a lot of you will already know, this is where my digital nomad journey began and what laid the foundation for a lot of my success. Blogging taught me how to create content for social media, take great photographs, be an effective copywriter, design beautiful websites, understand SEO, network with high-level people and so much more.

If you can succeed at being a ‘blogger’ you can succeed at any form of online hustle. The best thing about getting into blogging is that the barrier to entry is SO LOW. You can create a cheap website, hook up a cheap domain and literally write about anything you want. Eventually, you will begin to generate traffic. This will be hyper-targeted traffic because these people are coming to your website to look for specific content.

This is where you can monetise. You can place ads on your site from Google who do it automatically for you. Or you can pitch companies on monthly retainers to place banner ads on your site. You can also use my Free pitching template to make your digital nomad journey even easier.

Who doesn’t love free stuff (and potentially free travel)? You can even set up your own store filled with merch - the possibilities really are endless when you’re looking to generate income from your blog. Once you have a bank of articles done, they will constantly make you money too, so it can be a real passive earner with enough traffic.

How to scale?

• Charge larger fees for featured posts.

• Have an outreach specialist pitch to companies for you to scale your online business. These specialists can be full time or part time.

• Hire writers who know SEO well. Even if their English isn’t top drawer, their skills in SEO will still generate much more traffic for you. You can always proof their work before setting it live.

• Get guest post submissions. A great way of generating free content and also helping the writers with an authoritative backlink.

Affiliate Marketing - How to Make Money as a Nomad

This is kind of in the same vein as blogging, but with more of a laser-focused approach to what the website aims to do. With blogging, you can post more rambling-style content interspersed with the money-spinner stuff. Affiliate marketing is all about the sales. Affiliate marketing sites work well if they are based around reviews and listicles. This type of content lends itself very well to being able to link out to affiliate products dozens of times within the same article without looking spammy. You can also approach affiliate marketing from the social media side of things too.

Posting links to products on your story (if you have that function), having links in your bio and even just in messages to people who are interested in the products you talk about. There are lots of ways to bag affiliate sales. One of the best is Amazon affiliates if we’re just talking about ease and linking to amazon.com. As long as the user clicked your link, you still get the commission on any purchase they make within 24 hours. Considering how many people use Amazon daily, I wouldn’t bet against this being a big source of income for those of you looking to get started quickly.

Be sure to check out the affiliate advertising program description before signing up!

How to scale?

• Negotiate larger affiliate commission percentages where possible.

• Get a team of writers to write the articles for you (I used to do this for a Muay Thai affiliate site who were making big, big money simply reviewing equipment they hadn’t even tried…).

• Hire somebody to scour the web for the best affiliate programs and sign you up. This will free up a lot of research time and allow you to either write more, negotiate more or simply have more free time as a digital nomad.

Social Media Management - Digital Nomad Jobs for Beginners

Most of us have experience with social media. We all know what it’s like to be on one side of the algorithm, consuming content produced by others. Because of this, we know what people like - we are people. If you are someone who’s organised, can write good captions, has time to engage with users on social media and knows platforms like Instagram and TikTok like the back of your hand then you can make money simply taking over somebody’s account and running it for them.

A lot of business owners today are STILL not tech-savvy enough to take full advantage of the true potential of social media. If you can show this to them, their minds will be blown and they’ll think you are a master - which you are of course… One thing to note with social media management, a lot of people are under the impression that it’s easy to do.

You’ll often get something along the lines of “oh, my grandson will manage the social media side for us for free, he loves MySpace!”. You need to be prepared for this and be able to make a case for why they need a professional. If you build up a nice bank of case studies, you’ll have ample ammo to show the night and the day difference between a hobbyist and an expert.

How to scale?

• Utilise scheduling software like Hootsuite to automate posts and remove yourself from the majority of the process.

• Up your rates

• Use templated posts to reduce decision fatigue.

• Build a team. Since the management can be done at any time due to software, look at hiring people in lower cost-of-living areas that still speak excellent English.

SEO Specialism

This is a skill that everybody who has a website, social media profile or YouTube channel wants. You can choose to specialise in all of these areas or niche down to just one. But at the end of the day, EVERYBODY who wants to make money online needs SEO. If they have no level of search engine optimisation then they’ll never be found and they’ll never make any money.

That’s where you come in.

If you can up-skill yourself to a level where your input generates your clients insane returns, they’ll want you on retainers, they’ll tell their friends about you (if they’re in different industries) and you’ll begin making huge sums. You don’t even need that many tools. SEM Rush is good and Google has lots of free resources to keep on top of trends. Add a course, some mentorship and some real experience into the mix and your life as a global traveller SEO wizard begins to look pretty rosy.

How to scale?

• Up your rates

• Take a course

• Find a mentor

• Whitelabel for larger SEO firms

• Use software such as SEM Rush, Yoast and Ahrefs

• Slowly build a team and create an agency in your image

Other ideas

Other honourable mentions (that I haven’t done personally so can’t advise on) that have a slightly higher barrier to entry but may yield huge returns are:

📹 Youtube automation

💸 Drop shipping

🖥 Video editor

📱 SMMA

TL/DR

Look into the following industries if you want to free yourself from location-dependent work:

• Copywriting

• Translation

• Web design

• Graphic design

• English teaching

• Blogging

• Affiliate marketing

• Social media management

• SEO specialism

If you have any digital nomad jobs that I didn't cover in this list, feel free to get in touch and I can add some more remote jobs!

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Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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London: Why it's my new favourite place

London is my new favourite place. This year, I've been down to England's capital three times, which isn't too shabby considering we've been locked down and restricted for a large part of the year. In that time, I've absolutely fallen in love with the place and I want to explain why in this article.

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Why London?

The most obvious one is access. I live in Liverpool, which is only 2 hours away from London on the train. Since I can't travel pretty much anywhere outside of England because of current restrictions, having this close proximity to one of the world's most visited cities has been a godsend.

Not only that, but London is rife with opportunity, fun and pretty much anything else you can think of, at a much, much grander scale than you can find anywhere up North here in the UK. It also beats out most places on Earth for the above too.

What do I do in London?

Well, a lot! I've been to London several times this year and each time I've gorged myself into oblivion doing tourist stuff, eating copious amounts of food, drinking like Oliver Reed and shopping til I dropped, then some more. Here's all the hedonistic nonsense I love to do in the big smoke. It may even give you some ideas:

Swanky hotels

I do love an Air BnB, but there's just something special about getting set up in a hotel isn't there? I love the Assembly and The Dorsett City, London. Both offer something a little bit different but deliver on location and luxury.

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Our room in the Dorsett was right on the corner with amazing views and located right above the tube for ease of travel. The assembly was a completely different vibe, but located right in the centre of Leicester Square. Despite this, both rooms were silent and offered a perfect luxury stay.

Supercar spotting

This needs no explanation. The density of supercars around London is just sublime. Look to your left and there's a Ferrari. Over to your right, a Rolls Royce. It's the norm over there and it blows my mind.

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Selfridges

This is the starter to Harrods' main dish. Different experiences obviously, but I always like to do Selfridges on one day and then Harrods the next. My favourite thing to do is to go to The Fount to quaff a bottle of house champagne and then explore what Selfridges has to offer. Usually that'll be lots of clothes, lots of stupid sunglasses, doorstop cookie cake and people judging me for not having the money that they do. Ah, good times.

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Rinse the tube

Everyone will have to do this anyway to get around, but I do enjoy the tube. Plus, it's always BOILING down there, so it's a nice bit of respite from the cold weather if you go in winter.

Clothes, clothes, clothes

God I bloody love clothes. I don't usually buy them though, I'll usually treat myself to a piece on a special occasion or if I really need it. That said, London is always a special occasion, so I went to town with the Amex.

Here are some of my favourites:

Represent Clo t-shirt

Cole Buxton oversized hoodie

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Sandro polo shirt

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Canada Goose Chilliwack jacket

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Generic sightseeing

There aren't many things better than being an absolute tourist. Some people find it embarrassing being seen as a tourist in a city and would rather pose as a local. Not me baby. I love gawping up at buildings and landmarks, learning all about the place I'm in and just generally being happy to see all the most popular spots.

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I do also enjoy the less tourist-y things - don't get me wrong - but those who reject any form of generic sightseeing because they don't think it's cool enough can bugger off.

Never be embarrassed to be a tourist fellas!

Keep fit

You'll do a whole lotta walking when you visit the capital, but sometimes that's just not enough. Especially for most of my readers who are generally into their fitness. Finding cool gyms/classes is always a treat when you travel. I decided to train at Jubilee Hall Gym smack bang in the middle of Covent Garden, just because.

Loads of unreal food

Here are my highlights (although everything I ate was a highlight...):

The Real Greek

Greek isn't usually the number one cuisine you'd think of when coming to London. And apparently, The Real Greek is some big chain restaurant but I'd never heard of it before! I was not disappointed on my first experience. In fact, it was the best food I've had to date during all of my trips to London.

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The Ivy Soho

Very classy indeed. We went here for my girlfriend's birthday. Some of the best grub in town here. The Ivy Soho is part of the Ivy group as well, so there's lots more options across the UK.

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Leon

Naturally fast food - what's not to love? I got some salad box thing and it was delicious. Good macros as well which is good for the gym bunnies amongst us. A solid 7/10 for Leon.

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Rooftop restaurant

What's the best way to see London? From the rooftops! Get yourself a meal and enjoy the views. I went to the rooftop restaurant above my hotel and had to re-order my main because it was just that good. I also have an insatiable appetite for pasta so...

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English Breakfast

What good is a trip to the big smoke if you're not going to scoff big ol' English Breakfasts? 10/10 greasy goodness.

Market fodder

If there's a market on (especially around Christmas) then get down and enjoy everything it has to offer. God knows I did...

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Loads of equally unreal drinks

Here's what I got through:

Smoothies

Possibly the only healthy goods I consume when down in the capital. I like to start most days off with one of these. As long as I hit the gym in the morning and polish one of these off, I can be happy knowing I've at least done one good thing for my body that day.

Cocktails by the Thames

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As long as it's semi-decent weather, some outdoor cocktails looking over the Thames is just about as good as it gets.

A proper pint

I probably had too many of these.

Champagne

Probably had too many of these too. See evidence below.

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Coffee

And I DEFINITELY had too many of these. But when there is a selection of caffeination as vast as London at my disposal, how could I ever say no? That buzz of the first coffee is one of the greatest feelings there is. If you want something high-end, get yourself down to Harrods for their lattes - top tier goodness.

The Harry Potter Experience

Butter beer, fudge, chocolate frogs and a peek behind the curtain of the magic. What's not to love?

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Harrods

As mentioned above, their lattes are absolutely larvly. Every good shopping trip starts with a coffee and Harrods should be no exception. It opens at 10am and you’ll probably be able to spend all day in there, so I’d wager that’s high time for some caffeination. Right? Guys?!

Making big splurges is my bread and butter. I never buy anything for myself usually, but then will have periods where I just go crazy and buy everything. Harrods is no exception.

And finally, if you can get in, do Harrods champagne afternoon tea. It was the best afternoon tea I’ve ever had and it’s not even a close competition. It was just unbelievable.

Also, if you think there's a theme with me and champagne, you'd be right. I tend to think I'm a big time Charlie when I'm out and about.

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Usually my ego comes crashing down when somebody next to me orders something 50 times more expensive though, so that's good.

The Big Wheel

Obviously.

And if you can get an entire pod to yourself like we did then even better!

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Get a haircut

I tried out what is apparently the best barber shop in the UK - Ruffians. They didn't disappoint. I went a couple of hours early to grab a bit of WiFi and a few beers. The atmosphere in here was fantastic and so was the cut. Check them out if you're ever in need of a trim on the fly.

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Meet with clients

Everyone knows that London is the place to be if you want to make it big. I have multiple clients down in the big city and love to get some face to face time in with them as much as possible. The difference in opportunity is night and day.

If you want to learn a little bit more about what I do for business, you can view my website here.

Winter Wonderland (Christmas-only, obviously)

And this one is a little Christmas special that'll only be relevant to anyone reading this in November or December, but I had to include it. There's not many things better than Winter Wonderland during Christmas. It's like its very own festival with rides everywhere interspersed with food and drink huts and an entire Bavarian village where you can get steins to your heart's content.

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It has everything and is a must if you're visiting London any time around Chrimbo.

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So what on Earth are you waiting for? Get yourself to London and live like a king.

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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My modafinil review | Real life Limitless pill?

I'm sat writing this at precisely 04:26am. I'm almost 24 hours deep into my very first experience with modafinil - this sketchy little pill. I've got about 26 tabs open trying to do as many things as possible and write this at the same time - it's all a mess - but is it a coherent mess?

Am I Bradley Cooper from Limitless? Or am I Russell Crowe from A Beautiful Mind? Or neither?

So many questions, so litt- actually, so much time. There seems to be quite a lot of it when you don't sleep. Anyway, let's go back to the beginning - here is my modafinil review.

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What is modafinil?

According to Medline Plus, modafinil is described as:

"...used to treat excessive sleepiness caused by narcolepsy (a condition that causes excessive daytime sleepiness) or shift work sleep disorder (sleepiness during scheduled waking hours and difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep during scheduled sleeping hours in people who work at night or on rotating shifts)."

Essentially, modafinil promotes wakefulness. Not the jittery type that coffee induces, but something entirely different. Hard to describe, but I'll take my best stab at it in my breakdown of my modafinil experience further down.

Why do people take modafinil?

As stated above, it's mostly prescribed for narcolepsy, but can also be prescribed for obstructive sleep apnoea. Finally (and also unofficially), it is used for being productive and pulling all nighters. That last one is a complete misuse of the drug, but at the same time, it is an effective use. Modafinil has been tested on army troops throughout the years to keep them sharp and turn them into 'super soldiers'. After your first stint of wakefulness, a few hours of sleep can then allow you to go up to 48 hours without sleep again. So you'd be looking at almost 3 days awake. That is if you really tried to stay awake though. I managed to get off at a somewhat reasonable hour the day following my experiment.

Why did I take it?

So, why did I actually opt to give this wünder drug a go? Well, because I could. As you all know by now, I will try pretty much anything in the pursuit of being a better human. I'm like one of those gimpy biohackers, but much less of a weirdo. I think...

My modafinil review

So, what is modafinil like? Did it give me superhuman productivity? Did it make me a charming swine? WHAT HAPPENED? Well, first of all...nothing.

The come up, if you will, was really subtle. I had 100mg (which is half a pill) at first and felt nothing, so took the other half about 40 minutes later and my baseline then begun to feel a little different. Then I had a coffee and everything changed. As soon as I took that first sip, the caffeine must have interacted with the modafinil and caused some super saiyan reaction because I was walking down the street like Evil Peter Parker.

Productivity

I got a helluva lot of work done. I literally just sat down and cracked on with my web design client work all day. This is a little bit misleading though, as I will often do 16+ hour stints without modafinil if I have a big deadline coming up. This did facilitate getting into the zone a bit easier though.

Unreal pump

After getting a fair few hours of deep work under my belt, I decided to test out modafinil's supposed benefits in the gym. Apparently, it can illicit some naughty pumps. This one was an undeniable success. Paired with the coffee, it had me feeling fantastic. A strange caveat to this though, was that I actually felt weaker overall even though the pump was enhanced. Strange one really. My recommendation if you were going to do it, would be to have an arm day where progressing your big lifts isn't the priority and your sole aim is to get the filthiest little sleeve-busting pump possible.

Laser focus

Like a lot of people have alluded to, the buzz you get from taking modafinil isn't some crazy, 10-coffees deep chaotic thrill ride. It's more of a laser focus that sits just a little bit above your baseline. It is genuinely just like being you, but about 10% better. I can't describe it any other way. Whether that extra 10% is worth the potential downsides is up to you.

There were 5 minutes around the 15 hour mark where I was just sat at the kitchen table feeling like my throat was about to explode. Looking back, this was 100% anxiety about the side affects I had been reading up on and being a bit of a hypochondriac, I had worked myself up. After those 5 minutes passed, I got what felt like a second wave and was able to crack back on, but that's definitely something to watch out for.

Do I endorse taking modafinil?

Yes. Go ahead and snort it until your heart explodes and you die.

...of course I don't endorse taking it for any other reason than what you have been prescribed it for. I've only taken it once and to be honest, don't plan on taking at again. It was fun, I got a lot done and it isn't addictive, but there can be potential side affects.

This includes:

• Anxiety

• Feeling dizzy or nauseas

• Headaches

• Diarrhoea (or the other way - constipation)

• Heartburn

• Loss of appetite

And some more serious ones (which you should see a doctor immediately about) are:

• Rash, blisters or peeling skin

• Sores in your mouth or hives externally

• Excessive itching

• Pain in your chest, fast heartbeat or irregular heartbeat

• Problems breathing or swallowing

• Swelling anywhere on your body

These aren't common and I don't want to give people anxiety about it, but I always like to play devil's advocate and ensure you all have a balanced picture of things before making any decision.

So to conclude, it was a great experience, sans the 5 minutes of mental breakdown. Do I recommend it? No, but if you want to, who am I to get in your way?

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Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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How to get brand deals as an influencer with a small following (with templates)

Influencers, bloggers, vloggers and pretty much anyone with an audience have seen brand deals as the pinnacle of 'making it' since forever. Whilst this isn't really the case, it is a nice perk to the job. So in today's article, I'm going to be taking you on a step by step guide to getting brand deals as an influencer.

This will even work for those with small followings. No matter what size your audience is, you can always be useful to some brand, somewhere.

Before we get into it, if you want to watch the video version of this, do so below.

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Why me?

First off, a bit about me, why I’m writing this in the first place and why I’m qualified to give you advice.

I started my journey as a blogger back in 2017 and have built a decent audience on my website as well as an engaged, albeit smaller instagram audience too.

And despite not having a huge following like, say, Ali gordon or Alfie Deyes - I’ve managed to do some amazing things over the last 3 years.

I’ve been out to Metz in France, Bergen over in Norway, Lisbon - even a little jaunt to Bristol earlier this year. All paid for.

In fact, when I went out to Lisbon, I had less than a thousand followers.

Having also had the likes of Reiss, Panasonic, ASOS and Canali feature on the blog, I'd like to think I'm well placed to offer you advice on extracting the most amount of cool stuff from the least amount of followers.

So let's dive into the step-by-step guide to landing brand deals as an influencer (even if you have a small following).

#1 have a bit of bottle

First up is more of a mindset tip.

Have a bit of bloody bottle, balls, gumption - however you want to spin it. You can be the least confident person in the world but it doesn’t matter online.

You can hide behind your laptop screen. Honestly, the person on the other end gets hundreds of emails a day. They’re not gonna sit there and think “wow, what a cheeky sod - asking for compensation for creatively promoting our brand to their audience and increasing our sales”. It just doesn’t happen.

I send out dozens of emails a day sometimes. The law of averages dictates that you will get at least 1 or 2 eventually, so step up, puff your chest out and get typing.

#2 Never use contact forms

This is speaking from experience.When I used to work in customer service and saw someone’s message in our spam box - even when it shouldn’t be - I’d just delete it and laugh.

It was the virtual equivalent of a McDonald’s worker spitting in your burger before serving it up. It was terrible customer service, but it’s what happens.

And if some horrible gatekeeper like me doesn’t click delete, your message will probably just get lost in their system alongside millions of other stupid emails anyway. Plus, it’s impossible to track your email’s progress through the departments (more on that later) this way.

What’s the lesson here? Never use contact forms. Source an email instead (more on that later too).

#3 Who do you want to work with?

So who do you actually want to work with? And how are you gonna get your list together?

Easy peasy. It’s time to go old school.

Get yourself a notebook, write down all the brands you can think of. If you’re into fitness for instance, list all the fitness brands that you can think of straight off the dome.

Then once you’ve done that, break fitness up into every sub category you can think of. Fitness supplements, clothing, home gym equipment, workout programs, etc. etc. etc.

Then go to Google, type in “best…{your niche}” and click the top 5 results. if you want to filter down even more, put your location, so “best 'your niche' UK”.

All you have to do then is go through these list articles and write down all the companies you find that you think are cool. Once you’ve done that, start Googling all of the companies and open up their websites. You’re probably gonna have about 50 tabs open at this point, so make sure your computer can handle it.

#4 How to find the right people

This follows on from point 2. As I said, don’t settle for a contact form. Always go for the jugular.

If you can’t find any email addresses on the company’s contact page, there’s a few things you can do.

First, try to look for a "press" section. In there you’ll usually find some contacts and names for people in various PR roles. From there you can find exactly who you want to contact.

Second, if you can’t find the press section in the general site navigation, just Google the company name and add “press”, “press contact”, “pr” or something like that to the end. Usually this will bring up an email address in the page description on the Google results. Failing that, just click the page link and have a poke around there.

And third is our nuclear option. It’s our big red button for landing right in their stinking inbox. We’re gonna go into either the privacy policy, terms and conditions or terms of service. Click Command + F if you’re on mac. If you’re on PC, buy a mac and then click Command + F. When you have the search bar up, type '@' and then boom, you’ll have their info@ email.

It’s not the most desirable option but it’s a million times better than a contact form.

That way, you can customise your email and you’re not limited by their form's confines.

#5 Streak

This is gonna be a game changer for your pitching.

When I used to hammer the pitches out like clockwork, I had all sorts of different drafts that I would tap into to copy and paste across into pitch emails.

The problem with that is that when you copy the company’s email, you have to revisit the draft and recopy that over for the next pitch. I had to manually type out the subject line every time to boot. It literally took me hours every day.

I also had no way of seeing whether my emails were being opened. It was just a mess. Then I discovered Streak. It completely changed everything for me when pitching with the blog and with my business.

Just download it, sign in with your gmail account and you can start right away.

Turn on email tracking to make sure you can see the progress of your email. This can actually inform the tone you take when following up with potential leads, which is invaluable for closing the deal.

You can also create things called snippets which let you paste your message and your subject line in an instant. This will drastically reduce the amount of time you spend on your pitching workflow.

I’m not sponsored by Streak by the way, I just can’t believe software like this is free. I can’t recommend this enough. Get streak people.

#6 Your pitch

Right. Here we go.

This is what you came for. Here’s the exact template I use.

The key here is to pitch in two stages. Let’s call this the Crawford Method. That’s not its actual name but I want you to think of me when you’re landing collabs with Prada and Versace every week.

In your first email, you don’t want to give much away, so keep it vague.

You just want to say:

Good morning/afternoon {name - if you have it},

Hope you're well.

I'm emailing you today to check what sort of work you do with online publications?

My name is {name} - I run the {describe your website}, {website} and would love to work with {business} on a collaboration.

Let me know what you think and I can have a full proposal sent over asap.

Best,

{name}

It’s simple, it’s intriguing and they’re gonna come back and ask what you want. This is when you can add in links to your work and sell them.

For your second email, we’re gonna go in for the kill.

Hi {name},

Thanks for the response.

I would love to feature yourselves in an article on {website} alongside some Instagram coverage on a gifting basis.

I've attached my media kit which outlines all my key stats, demographics, etc. Hopefully that shows what I can offer, but if you want any more info please feel free to ask.

What do you think?

Best,

{name}

If you don’t have a media kit, don’t worry. You can knock one of them up on Canva for free no problem. If you can’t be bothered to mock one up, just list your stats instead. And if your stats aren’t up to much, just don’t include them. If you can offer something unique to the brand then it won’t matter.

Anyway, once you’ve sent this, it’s game on. Honestly, the hit rate on this email is like 70%. It’s magic.

After that, it’s up to you to work your individual charm if they have any specific questions, but if you’ve come this far you should be golden. Also, don't forget to follow up. Sometimes, people need one or two chases before they come back to you. There’s nothing wrong with that, they’re busy people, so put yourself in their shoes and just give them a gentle nudge every 2 or 3 days.

#7 Be prepared for some knockbacks

This goes without saying, but when pitching to hundreds of people, you’re gonna get some knockbacks.

Most of them are formal, but some people can be real buggers. One time I had a brand that was being sold on Mr. Porter come back to me and started calling me all sorts.

I can’t remember exactly what now but isn't it mad to think that your email might be the reason that some CEO somewhere snaps and goes on a murderous rampage decapitating interns?

Anyway what I'm trying to say is get some thick skin. You’re gonna experience a few idiots, but when you’re tearing the town up in your newly gifted Gucci robes, you won’t care that Bob from Lonsdale called you a money grabber.

#8 Quick tips

• Make sure you actually have something to leverage or offer.

• Never put links in your initial email - it will get you a one-way ticket to the spam box.

• Follow up 3 times - any more and you’re just searching for no’s.

• Don’t expect this to pay your bills.

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That’s your lot people. How to get brand deals, every step of the bloody way.

Hopefully these steps will have you on your way to superstardom in no time.

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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My 30 before 30 list | Never too late to start

Here it is people, my 30 before 30 list. I've never really thought of doing one of these, but as I approach the halfway mark between 20 and 30 it has dawned on me that I'm getting older and soon, I won't have all this time and energy to do loads of mad things.

So I've given myself the next 6 years to do as much of this list as possible.

I was thinking that 6 years isn't that long, but then I looked back to 6 years ago and I was still a snot-nosed virgin who hadn't even gone to university yet. So maybe 6 years is adequate time. I just need to do 5 things on this list each year.

Easy, right?

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1. Become a millionaire

Why not aim high ey?

If I continue saving and growing my business, why can't I reach the dizzying heights of being absolutely minted?

We shall see.

2. Learn a language

I have tried and tried to learn a language and every time I seem to fail.

Or at least fail to stick with it.

I actually got pretty handy at French for my trip to Metz a while back, but I have virtually forgotten everything except for "putain de merde".

So with that in mind, I'd quite like to get proficient in a language. Spanish sounds nice so I might go for that.

Me gusta!!!! Or something like that...

3. Have my own house

This is the ultimate in boring life aspirations, but it's always nice to have somewhere to call your own without lining someone else's pockets.

Ideally, I would love to buy a plot of land and build a shipping container home myself but I very much doubt that will ever happen unfortunately.

Maybe a plush little beige new build will do.

4. Have apartments in 3 different cities

Liverpool, London, Ibiza.

That's the goal baby.

If I'm a millionaire then this one should slot right into place.

5. Go to Glastonbury

Sitting in a field injecting heroin whilst listening to music with smelly strangers.

WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?

6. Live abroad

I've lived in England and Wales, so kinda done this one on a micro level, but I'm talking fully-fledged laptop lifestyle vibes in some dingy little bedsit.

This is a must-do.

7. Live in London

Just want to live everywhere don't I?

Every time I visit London I fall in love with it even more and would jump at the chance to spend even just a few months living in the capital.

8. Eat at a Michelin star restaurant

I love to eat.

Don't we all?

But I've never really been 'fine dining' before.

Never have I been called Sir by the waiter. Never have I eaten lobster on a fancy pants dish with a 97 year old Italian man playing classical piano in the background.

THAT is what I want.

9. Drive a supercar

Even if it's just at a track day, my dream is to drive as fast as humanly possible in anything remotely resembling a supercar.

Ferrari, Lamborghini, Toyota Yaris - if it's fast and/or sexy, I want to drive it.

10. Get a season ticket for Liverpool FC

The waiting list isn't even open because there's that many people on it, so this may not even be possible.

But I'm still going to try.

11. Go to the airport with a backpack and fly to a random place

Maybe once Coronavirus has left us...

12. Buy a completely bespoke suit

Everything nowadays is off-the-shelf.

I remember my grandparents telling me about how back in the day, when a man got a suit, it was always made completely from scratch. Multiple measurement sessions, lots of bespoke cloth and a finished product unlike anything you could buy from the store.

Something like that nowadays will cost an arm and a leg, but I still want it.

And I'd ensure I got my wear out of it. Even if I had to wear it to the gym or to bed, I would wear that suit until the arse fell out of it.

13. Invest in an original artwork

None of that replica nonsense.

I want the real McCoy.

Not that it makes any difference but it's just a lot cooler having the original piece isn't it?

Is it? I don't know. But I want it.

14. Give blood

Because it always feel good to give.

I'm sure my blood will cure all sorts of ailments, being the walking deity that I am.

So I may as well get this one done sooner rather than later and start curing the masses.

15. Go clay pigeon shooting

Ooohhh la-dee-dah!

Charles I've got another one! Huzzah gents!!

To be a posh toff for just one day is all I'm asking.

16. Have a night in the Casino

Oh to act rich and throw it all on red. I can dress up in that bespoke suit and use my newly acquired millions...

17. Skydive

Anus shattering and trouser staining fun for the whole family.

I would absolutely love to do a skydive if I can muster the courage over the next 6 years.

18. Visit 25 cities

Not quite sure what I'm on at the moment, but providing we can travel freely soon, I hope to have this done relatively soon.

19. Invest in my own barrel of whiskey

This sounds too good to be true, but whiskey investment has seen the biggest yield in terms of portfolio growth of any sector.

I'd need a lot more disposable income to warrant such an investment but hopefully I can get my name on a barrel soon.

Although I will be careful, it can be quite a whiskey investment. Wahey! Do you get it? Because whiskey sounds like risk- oh forget it.

20. Go glamping'

A ponce's version of slumming it - glamping looks like an absolute banging time, so I'm gonna be booking a little trip to a pod v soon.

21. Open my own gym

I've had this dream since I was about 16 and started going to the gym.

In fact, I did a full project on it for my business A-level lol.

Maybe one day before I reach the big three-oh, I'll make it a reality.

22. Have afternoon tea in The Ritz

Ideally, I want to do this asap.

If you managed to watch Inside the Ritz Hotel, then you'll know why.

23. Fly business class

It would be great to feel like I wasn't a peasant - even just for one little trip.

24. Volunteer

Weirdly, I've never volunteered for anything. Ever.

Some may say 'entitled little boy' and I would be inclined to agree.

Hopefully I can get this ticked off and turn it into a more long term habit.

25. Go to a comedy club

I've been to a comedy night to support a mate of my dad's once, but that was only a really small event.

I want a proper night at the comedy night with the works. I'm talking a fat bowl of nachos, loads of pints and a few heckles included.

26. Get a tattoo

Right across my forehead saying 'Gangsta'.

Or you know, something similar...

27. Vegas

Go out to the desert and blow thousands. It sounds unbeatable to me.

28. Learn self-defence

I learnt mixed martial arts for a few months but moved away and didn't pick it back up so for now, I'm a big floppy mess who couldn't throw a punch to save his life.

It would be nice to pick it back up and feel like I could knock your nan out if she served me a lukewarm cuppa.

29. Create my own piece of art

This could be in tandem with #13 in that this would technically be an original piece of art.

Anyway, I used to love art. As a kid I would sit for hours to draw, paint and do all sorts of artistic nonsense.

Then I got it beaten out of me by the boring school schedule of maths and english.

So it would be great to get back into it and become an acclaimed artist.

Being acclaimed by yourself counts doesn't it?

30. Tough Mudder

I've been saying I'd do this for years and years. In fact, I've been saying it for almost a decade.

Bloody pathetic wimp...

Anyway, once it's back up and running post-rona I'm making this one a priority.

Honourable mentions

Here's a few things that you might be wondering why they're not in the list. Well that's because I've done them lol. If you want to do your own 30 before 30 list though, these might help get those lightbulbs lit up.

• Travel solo (see the write-up here)

• Go to New York

• Start my own business

• Eat at a restaurant alone

• Learn to drive

• Climb a mountain

• Become an organ donor

• Publish a book

• Learn to swim

• Ride a rollercoaster

• Become an extraordinarily handsome human being, the likes of which the world will never see again...

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So that's my 30 before 30. How many do you think I can do? Have you been inspired to draft one up yourself? So many god damn questions!!!!!

Anyway, check back in 6 years and we'll see how I did. Maybe you should jump on it with me.

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

Why you need a yearly Instagram sabbatical

So, it's over. I have just completed by second annual Instagram sabbatical.

I've written about my first experience quitting Instagram for 30 days here and I've also written about quitting Twitter indefinitely here just in case you want a little read of these after you've made your way through this goldmine of an article.

Anyway, the point is, ya boi has got previous with quitting social media so I'm quite well versed in this space.

Essentially - trust me on this.

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What is a yearly Instagram Sabbatical?

It's simply taking a break from the gram for a prolonged period of time.

At the end of the day, Instagram is just a free app on your phone - it isn't a divine entity.

It's just as much of a meaningless abyss as Candy Crush or Google Maps.

Repeat after me... "Instagram is just a free app on my phone".

Good.

Now taking a time off might seem sacrilegious to some of the great unwashed out there, but once you get past that mental hold that Insta seems to have on every man and his dog, you'll realise that a measly 30 days really is nothing.

Taking a set break each year is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Is this the same as quitting Instagram?

No.

You're just taking a break. So don't get all hot and clammy and start having palpitations at the thought of never going back again.

Your Instagram sabbatical isn't a social death sentence, it's the start of Operation: Plug Out. You're gonna feel like you're living outside the Matrix for a bit, that's all.

What benefits are there to taking an Instagram Sabbatical?

You're gonna get all sorts of benefits from taking an Instagram Sabbatical. You can see some others here, but I'm gonna list a few new ones below for your perusal you sexy unplugged swine, you.

Life feels less rushed

Life when you've got Instagram burning a hole in your pocket can really pass you by in an instant.

You're always rushing to get your drinks or your meal so that you can capture it perfectly at *just* the right moment.

You're always rushing to get to the end of a conversation so you can respond to your DM's and comments.

You're always rushing through just about everything in your life at the behest of Zuckerberg and his underlings.

When you take even just a second away from its all-too-alluring pull, you can actually take time to do the things you're so busy capturing. Without sounding hippy dippy à la Eckhart Tolle, being present and not fast-forwarding your life to accomodate an app is a breath of fresh air.

You genuinely become happier

Trust me on this one.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, when you take time out from Instagram, you will become happier. That might sound like quite a blanket statement (which it is), but you're not constantly checking your phone, draining your attention, being bombarded with people living an infinitely better life than you and Saudi Princes with pet tigers shooting dollar bills at you.

Life becomes what it once was - life.

Not some mad pumped up, Life 2.0 matrix that we've all become so accustomed to.

Get yourself reacquainted with boredom

Who would have thought it?

I genuinely missed boredom.

When was the last time you were really bored? Like actually bored?

Bet you can't even remember.

Seriously, as soon as we feel even the slightest twinge of boredom, out comes the phone and in swoops The Zuck™ and his cronies to offer salvation from a second alone with your thoughts.

When I instinctively reached for Instagram I literally had the muscle memory to open up my phone and keep clicking where it was, only to click the random app that had moved into its place. I kept doing this for at least a week, probably longer. But eventually, I came to accept that sometimes, it's okay to just sit there for a bit and think.

Scary, right?

But it was great. I would sit and actually concentrate on something. A problem I was thinking over for example, would often get solved as I sat in the sofa binge eating popcorn and scratching my arse. It was magical.

Focus out the wazoo

This was probs my favourite of the benefits.

When I work, I often have my phone chilling right next to me, whispering sweetly into my ear; "come on papi, open me up and scroll all over me..." but since I deleted Instagram and I'm not on any other social media (unless you count WhatsApp), there was literally nothing to do on it, so I was able to resist its advances.

I found myself focusing for long periods, boxing off work on my business in record time. Before, I'd do about 5 minutes of work then pat myself on the back, scroll for 15-20 minutes on Instagram, go on my emails, watch a few YouTube videos, stuff my face with some chocolate, get very guilty and then do another 5 minutes of work, only to repeat that process ad infinitum.

Now I will sit there for at least half an hour, up to around 3 hours and just do what I set out to do for the day.

Honestly, it's like taking NZT-48.

When should I take my sabbatical?

Take one whenever you damn well please my friend.

I usually take mine in June/July to get a nice summer month of enjoying myself and getting my life together.

You might opt to do one in December to enjoy the run up to Christmas and New Year or you might do January to really attack those new year new me promises.

At the risk of sounding like one of the worst types of people (the "well, it depends" brigade), it depends. What is your goal or purpose for the Instagram sabbatical? Are there any events that you truly want to be present for? Or are you just at the brink and need a month off? I've been there for that last one especially, trust me!

What if I never want to come back?

Then don't.

Obviously.

Instagram is great for making pals and being a snoop.

But it comes with many, many pitfalls.Unfortunately for me, my job requires me to be on there at least some of the time (as a blogger and digital marketer). It's a bit like a heroin addict living in a crack den.

If I didn't have to be, I'd be as far away from the app as humanly possible. But there we go.

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Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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How my blog helped me quit my job

Since the dawn of COVID-19, we've been spending virtually every waking second indoors. Despite this, it's actually given us all a taste of true freedom - in some sort of twisted, ironic way.

We no longer have to spend our time travelling to work, sitting in work or going to other boring work-related nonsense. We've all had the taste of what it's like to work from home and I would wager a fair portion of us like it.

Luckily for me, I've had the pleasure of working from home for the past 2 years. This article will explore how my blog helped me quit my job and how maybe creating one can help you to quit yours too (if that's the dream...).

Anyway, enough waffle, let's do it.

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When and where did the blog start?

I think my blog started around April 2017, which means at the time of writing, I've been in the game for 3 years. It's a bit mad that I still have things to natter on about come to think of it...

And where? It was actually on a train down to the Midlands where my girlfriend told me she had started her own blog called The Adopted Scouser. We're overly competitive and I like to try and beat her at just about everything, so I thought I'd give this a whirl. Whether or not I have done the whole blog thing better than her is still questionable though. Go over to her site and make your own mind up. Oh, and if you think our sites look similar, that's because I copied her design too lol.

When did I realise you can make money from blogging?

It was when Canali reached out to me and said they'd pay me the grand sum of £200 to write an article about them. This was at a crucial point as it turns out, because I was having serious doubts about whether or not my blog was even going anywhere. Traffic at the time was less than 300 visitors per month and I lacked any real love for the graft.

This collab really gave me motivation and gave my blogging zest a real kick up the jacksy. Fast forward to now and I'm getting 500 views per day (not mind blowing but not bad), have done well over 50 collaborations and genuinely had my life changed by this little corner of the internet that I am lucky enough to call my own.

When did I use my blog to help me quit my job?

April 2018, 12 months after starting the blog, I realised there was something in it.

I wasn't quite sure what that was yet but I knew it was there.

At the time, I worked in tourist information. There were just too many idiots in the general public coming up to me and asking stupid questions. If anyone ever tries to tell you the customer is right, I hereby give you permission to spit in their face and tell them what a stupid assumption that is.

The customer is always wrong.

And after one customer (I say customer, it was someone else that worked there - and I did accidentally ask his wife whether she was his mum) in particular ground my gears, I handed my resignation letter in and set off on my journey to become the internet's most phenomenal and respected source of all knowledge ever.

Can you make a good living from blogging alone?

The unfortunate answer for about 90% of bloggers is going to be a big fat no.

That's just how the cookie crumbles.

I would have been back in my 9-5 long ago if I had stuck with just my blog instead of diversifying out to other bits and bobs. In fact, it was because I stuck to trying to make my blog my sole source of income for so long, that I wasted about £15,000 in savings.

That's a lot of money to wager on some words that you write on the internet.

Don't get me wrong, if you become the next Ali Gordon or Alfie Deyes then yeah, you can make a good living, but I get a kick out of crushing dreams so the chances are - you're not gonna make it.

I mean, if the world's greatest wordsmith (aka, me) can't make a full time living out of this gig, then there's NO WAY you can - you nitwitted imbecile.

I kid, I kid - but just think about it logically for a bit.

How can you use a blog to help you quit your job?

So after crushing your dreams and telling you blogging probably won't make you exorbitant sums of cash every month, I'm about to make it up to you. I'm going to give you 4 ways that a blog can help you quit your job. These aren't rocket science but they might just be life changing...

1. Collaborate

This is the one I had my sights on since day 1. I remember how amazing it felt when I landed my very first collab with beard oil brand Thatchface. I thought I'd made it.

The truth is, most collabs don't pay in the initial stages, but by building up a good base of previous work, you can show brands what they're getting when they work with you.

Then it's up to you to set your rate and get pitching. Before I started my business, I'd be pitching to dozens of brands per week, sometimes I'd do outreach to over a hundred in a day.

Make a huge list of brands you want to work with, get their emails (if you find it hard to find, they're usually hidden away in their privacy policy or terms of service) and start firing them badboys off like your life depends on it.

2. Monetise the blog

Good one Sam. How do you make money from your blog? Monetise it. Groundbreaking.

Let me explain.

There are ways you can make money from just doing simple things on your blog. Now, not all of these are considered to be high-horse worthy, but they're just ideas if you want to eek out as much money as you can.

• Paid links in existing articles

• Paid guest posts

• Amazon affiliate links

• Banner ads

Just make sure you declare all of these clearly where you can. Some people make megabucks off the above, but I would suggest not relying on any of them.

I've tried 'em all and they're okay but there's a reason I don't do them anymore...

3. Develop your skills

This has been THE biggest one for me and I think it will be for you too.

Literally everything that I charge my clients for now, I have self-taught. Do you realise how effective just setting up this blog has been at throwing me in at the deep end and forcing me to learn?

• Writing

• SEO

• Email marketing

• Social Media management

• Web design

• Google PPC

• Facebook/Insta Ads

Everything on that list, I had no clue about back in 2017. I wanted to be a well-to-do psychology researcher at some swanky lab. Rewind a little before that and I wanted to be a sports coach, further back...architect, further back...footballer, further back...a dinosaur.

As you can see, having my own digital marketing agency never even entered my noggin until about 2 and a half years after getting The Man Blueprint fired up.

And why can't you do this too? There's so many applicable soft skills and life skills that starting up and monetising a blog will teach you.

4. Teach others

This follows on nicely from the above.If you're good at something, never do it for free.

Well, most of the time.

When you've been at the blogging game for long enough, you will have built up a huge wealth of experience that you can pass on to others in a tiny percentage of the time.

Start a course, build a business that offers training - hell, start conferences where you teach people how to do something. Although to establish a morsel of authority, it's probably best that you spend at least a year or two dishing out swathes of value-ridden content.

That's what I am currently in the process of doing. I have stupid amounts of know-how in building a serious income from nothing and I want to teach others how to do it 10x as quick as me.

It'll take a long time to put it all together but keep those eyes peeled. I've also done my time in the free-content game so don't chastise me lol.

Anyway, this isn't the time to hard sell...

Take a skill you've mastered from your blog (getting collabs, building email lists, growing Instagram accounts - whatever it may be) and teach people how to do it quicker and better than you for a price.

Set for life.

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Hopefully this has helped at least a few people realise that there is abundant opportunity out there when it comes to quitting your job and pursuing a dream.

And hopefully it has managed expectations of those who believe that starting a blog is the magic bullet for superstardom and riches. It's a long, hard process but one that is worth the graft if you've got the stones to stick it out.

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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The Fjallraven Kanken is a digital nomad's dream

Today, I have one of my favourite collabs to date. Fjallraven have been kind enough to send me over one of their Kanken backpacks to test drive (and keep - because who would want that back once it's come in contact with my sweaty bod?).

As someone who would probably class himself as a digital nomad, ie - someone who can work from anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection - I thought this backpack would be the answer to all of my problems.

Turns out, it was.

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Who are Fjallraven?

"Hailing from the small town of Örnsköldsvik in Sweden, a place where mountains and forest meet the sea, Fjällräven is an outdoor clothing and equipment company that’s committed to making nature more accessible. In true Swedish style, we focus on simplicity and practicality, and we have the utmost respect for the environment."

Straight to the point. I like it.

The Kanken

The Kanken (specifically, the Kanken No. 2 Black) backpack is by far my favourite in the Fjallraven range.

I don't want to pigeonhole them, but Fjallraven have become quite well known for their diddy little backpacks that Pinterest girls wear religiously. That is why I think the Kanken - the big daddy laptop version - offers the perfect alternative for those who want to escape this image and utilise the frankly brilliant Fjallraven range to its fullest.

After trying the Kanken for the past 6 weeks, here's why I've decided that it should be the go-to backpack for all digital nomads (and probably even those who just want a nice bag lol).

Why the Fjallraven Kanken is a digital nomad's dream

Where do we start with this one? There's so much to this Kanken that I simply didn't expect. Some of these may sound very, very trivial, but I'm going to explain each one and try to convince you cold hearted psychopaths why they actually make sense.

Let's list a few shall we?

Side bottle pockets

There's not many things worse than being out and about (being the #adventurer that you are...) and running out of water, is there?

Well, there's quite a lot of things worse than that but you know what I mean.

Anyway, having these little side pockets is perfect for putting either plastic bottles (yuck!!!!) or stainless steel bottles (yum!!!!) and keeping on top of your hydration gains all day. Seems trivial but having these on the outside of the backpack creates loads more room inside the bag to stuff full of other essentials like Yu-Gi-Oh cards or Beyblades.

Double compartments

The Kanken has two distinct compartments which is ideal for keeping stuff separated if you so please. For instance, a lot of backpacks will have a laptop sleeve in the back which is all well and good, but it's still not completely separate and easy to get to.

If you want to jump in and grab your lappy whilst you're in the airport, the Kanken has you covered. Just unzip the back part and dip in. You can also stuff notebooks, pens or even an iPad or something in there too. One compartment for tech and the other for clothes, etc. It's a modern day version of 'business up front, party in the back'. Think of it like a futuristic mullet, for your back. Or don't. Whatever.

Mat included

There's even a little slide-out mat in there, which is well hidden, but when you bring it out it's actually rather substantial. Since Fjallraven build their gear for adventurers, this mat can be used to sit on mountain sides for a rest when you're ascending to the summit of some huge monolith of a hill.

Whereas us digital nomads could probably just use it as a nice cushion to put on a dingy coffee shop stool.

Still a nice touch though...

Name tag

This is basically the grown-up version of your mum writing your name in the back of your school shirts so the grubby kids wouldn't steal your pristine whites.

In all seriousness though - it's a handy little feature to have in case for some reason, your bag gets waylaid. If you're a little wanderlust seeker much like myself then you might have to put your bag through airport security. No dramas if it ever gets lost then - your details will be right there inside.

You could probably do this with every bag ever - I know - but the fact that Fjallraven have thought ahead and put this in there is a nice touch. It's the little things.

Massive capacity in a small vessel

Absolute tardis vibes.

This backpack is perfect for taking on holiday and saving on luggage fees for the frequent travellers amongst us. Since the compartments zip all the way down, you can fill every inch with clothes, chargers and whatever else you like to stow away on your travels.

It travels well this little fella.

Looks

And obviously - the thing just looks damn good.

If you want to get your very own Fjallraven Kanken then you can find one here.

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Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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The official whistle-stop Bristol travel guide

Back in January, I had the pleasure of visiting Bristol. Having been to Bath (right next door) and having also heard some great things about the city, I'd been keen to get down sooner rather than later.

Luckily, the kind folks at Visit Bristol helped me out by inviting me down to see what all the fuss was about.

This guide will take you through everything you need to know, from the perspective of someone who has done it before.

Have a read on and hopefully you'll be equipped with the knowledge you need to tackle this unique little city.

And hopefully, it'll all be done and dusted within 5 minutes so you don't get bored of my rambling. In fact, time yourself. Go on. I dare ya.

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Why Bristol?

Bristol is unlike any other city in the UK - if not the world.

The people there are totally unique and their buildings (*and the art adorning them*) are even more unique - if that was possible. There is history in abundance, but in equal measure, they are packing new, exciting architecture, experiences and places to visit.

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We'll get down to the finer details a little further on but rest assured, if you're a culture junkie, you really need to get down here.

How to get there

Planes, trains and automobiles baby.

If you're visiting Bristol from further afield, you can fly directly into their airport. Trains vary wildly in price - a ticket for me (without a railcard) from Liverpool would be £85 - aka a rip off. Obviously the further into the south of England you are, the cheaper it'll be.

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We chose to drive because a full tank of petrol for me is about £40 so our journey was £80 in total split between two - not bad. The journey took about 3.5 hours. Again, the further south you are, the shorter and cheaper it'll be. The further north - the further the inverse is true. Obviously.

You can also get the ferry down there if you're a weirdo.

What are the prices like?

Prices are pretty much what you'd expect in the south of England.

Not too different but you will notice the difference if you're used to doing your shopping, eating and drinking in the cheap ol' north.

That being said, it's a lot cheaper than London so that's a bonus.

Where to stay

Brooks Guesthouse were our hosts for the weekend and I couldn't recommend the place highly enough. The rooms were stylish, the breakfast was unreal and the staff were really attentive and made sure we had everything we needed.

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They also have a deal with the nearby car park which gets you a heft sum off your ticket which saved us more than £25!

If you want somewhere where you'll be well looked after and has everything you could possibly need, the Brooks Guesthouse is the place for you.

One thing I do have to mention though - the wifi in our room was virtually non-existent. To the point that we had to hotspot our phones instead. It may have just been our room because downstairs it was fine but just one to keep in mind.

What to actually do

I titled this article 'The ultimate 5-minute Bristol travel guide' and I aim to keep it to 5 minutes. Ain't nobody got time fo' long reads when it comes to city guides.

You're probably reading this on your way down to Bristol if you're anything like me so we'll get you up to speed in record time. You bloody last minute-r you...

Where The Wall tour

Probably what Bristol is most renowned for - their street art and graffiti.

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The guys at Where The Wall take you through the hometown of Banksy. The main guy, John, who takes the tours 52 weeks of the year, is the most knowledgeable bloke you could hope to have as a guide.

With personal connections to Banksy and so many other street artists, his take on the scene is really refreshing. The 2-hour tour was over in a flash and was by far my favourite part of the trip.

If you do anything - do this.

M shed

This museum is a fantastic foray into Bristol's past and present. You could spend hours in here and you should definitely make a beeline for it when you visit.

We the curious

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A lot of it is aimed at a younger audience but that didn't stop us having a laugh in there. There's actually loads of interesting stuff to get stuck into and you may well find a lot of curious facts that you hadn't known before. Bonus.

The Bristol Ferry

The Bristol Ferry is a unique way to experience Bristol's rivers and it's actually very fun. The captain was friendly AF (like everyone in Bristol come to think of it) and offered us loads of info on where to go and what to see.

As long as you don't suffer from sea legs, the Bristol ferry is a must-do.

St. Nicholas market

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Very, very bougie.

I loved St. Nicholas market (which is literally across the street from the Brooks Guesthouse) thanks to its amazing bustling atmosphere. There are all sorts of cool little stores dotted around the market as well as a buzzing restaurant scene.

We went for some vegan sausage rolls and samosas and I have to say - that samosa was the best god damn samosa I've ever tasted. Thank you Bristol - home of heavenly samosas.

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Where to eat

There are all sorts of places to eat when visiting Bristol. Seriously, there's something for all palettes.

Quay Street Diner

The folks at Quay Street Diner were kind enough to host us on the Saturday night of our stay and what a gaff this place is! If you're into your burgers, you've gotta try this place out.

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On the night we went, they had a mahoosive party on upstairs meaning our main took 2 hours to come, but all was forgiven thanks to the unbelievable customer service these guys provided.

They brought us loads of snacks to keep us going and threw in a load of prosecco for good measure. Not to mention the grub was worth the wait.

Seriously, the waffles at the end were some of the best I've ever had.

Nandos

A little bit boring of us but sometimes you have to be #cheeky and go for a Nandos don't you?

There's way more on offer in Bristol's food scene but I just couldn't resist the allure of that sweet, sweet chicken.

Sue me.

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Spicer & Cole

This was a cafe we stopped off at for breakfast on our first day in Bristol and I fully recommend giving it a try.

It gets very busy but just look at that grub they're serving up...

Would I recommend visiting Bristol?

100% yes.

There's literally something for everyone here - from upmarket eateries to independent, street-art draped bars - you'll find it all down in big ol' Brizzo.

Make sure to tell everyone that The Man Blueprint sent you - you'll be sure to get all sorts of discounts.

Well, you won't, because no one there has ever heard of me but it'd be funny if you did, so you know...do it.

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My advice to new bloggers | A beginner's guide

So, you're a new blogger?

It can be a daunting task setting up a blog and writing stuff you're passionate about whilst running the risk that no one will read it, people will hate it, or your friends and family discover it and disown you.

It can also be daunting trying to build your own website from scratch, setting up a hosting plan, buying your domain, keeping on top of dead links and learning SEO.

Basically, there's a lot of daunting stuff.

I get it. I've been there.

But all that you need to concentrate on from the off is the actual bloody blogging. In this article, we're going to go over my advice to new bloggers in this article. It'll be my top 5 tips that you should be making a note of and trying to implement as soon as possible.

Do as I say and your blog will be as top banana as it can possibly be. Maybe.

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What qualifies me?

There are absolutely all sorts of how to blog articles out there and there are some genuinely interesting people writing decent pieces, but so much of is just churned out by ghostwriters who are regurgitating and rephrasing existing articles that were written by other ghostwriters doing the same thing.

And so the cycle of misinformation and un-implementable advice continues.

I am always one to bang out the self-depreciating humour, but on this occasion, I'll actually big myself up a bit so you know that the advice you're getting isn't just wishy-washy drivel that won't get you anywhere.

In the 2 and a half years since starting this blog I have done the following;

• Published over 150 articles.

• Been nominated for a best male blogger award.

• Published my own book.

• Worked with brands like Reiss, ASOS, Bvlgari and Canali.

• Had over 100,000 visitors to the blog

• Used my new writing skills to earn thousands of £'s doing freelance copywriting for businesses.

• Started my own creative writing studio, later expanding to social media marketing and web design.

• Have now worked for myself for over 18 months.

• And of course, the obligatory...met loads of great people!!!!

Please don't think this is a big brag list. I mean, obviously it is, but I'm just trying to illustrate a point. There have been times where I've felt like I've made absolutely zero progress, felt like a failure and really had to battle with imposter syndrome. But when you list out all the things that you have accomplished, it can put things into perspective.

As the famous quote from C.S. Lewis goes; "day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different". Don't underestimate the power of small but consistent steps and always make time to look back and assess how far you've come during your blogging journey.

Way back when, I did an article featuring interviews with already-established bloggers on how people could get started and succeed in blogging because at the time, I had absolutely no idea. I never thought one day I'd write a big bastard of a post all by myself. Maybe all the other bloggers in that article have better advice than me so go and check that out when you get the chance.

But for now, PLEASE READ WHAT I HAVE TO SAY.

Why blogging?

I could give you a million and one mind numbing stats about why and how blogging is taking over the internet, with bloggers being the new rockstars, travelling the world and making millions.

The fact of the matter though, is that I'm too lazy to do so and you probably don't need selling on the idea that blogging is the dog's bollocks if you're reading this.

Should I have said "the blog's dollocks" there? That would have been a bit funnier wouldn't it?

Oh well.

My top 5 bits of advice to new bloggers

Now for what you're actually reading this godforsaken article for. My wise words. The blogging grand master is about to impart his eon's worth of experience and #knowledge upon you mere mortals/peasants/n00bs.

So grab a notepad and pen and get ready to have your head swelled to dangerous proportions with ancient blogging wisdom.

1. Niche down (at some point)

Listen, when I started, I was writing slow cooker stew recipes. I knew I wanted the site to be about lifestyle and self-improvement, but I had no idea how much of it I wanted to cover.

So I just covered every bit of it.

I had all sorts of categories like book reviews, politics, album reviews - it was so scatterbrained.

Eventually, I niched down.

I decided on my 3 categories about 18 months ago; Style, Wellbeing & Culture. They're still quite broad, so if I wanted to go off on a bit of a tangent I could probably still put it under one of these. But that's beside the point.

The point is, I tried everything - literally everything - and eventually found what I wanted to write about. Then I doubled down on doing my very best work in these subjects.

It's that simple.

2. Write 400 words every single day

This is very similar to the Jerry Seinfeld ' don't break the chain' method. I split the 400 words up into 2 chunks throughout the day. 200 words is extremely easy to write so it won't be as scary to start as if you had set a goal to write an entire blog post in the day.

Once you reach 200 words though, you'll likely find yourself in a flow state and you won't want to stop. This often means you'll end up doing closer to about 500 words instead of the 200, meaning 1,000-ish words per day if you keep that state going.

Don't beat yourself up if you just want to write your two, 200 word chunks and be done with it though. 400 words every weekday equates to 2,000 words per week. Depending on how long your blog posts are, that could mean as many 4 blogs written in a week just from about 20 minutes of writing per day.

If you want to really up the ante, try carrying on your 400 words per day on the weekends too. This will amount to an extra 41,600 words written per year.

Blogging really is all about them little, consistent steps.

3. Fall in love with what you write about

It goes without saying, you should start your blog with the intention of writing about things that interest you. But what is often overlooked is the journey that you need to go on to really fall in love with the stuff that you write.

Treating each post almost as its own piece of art is an important step in making the best content you can possibly produce. It sounds so daft - trust me I know - but you have to fall in love with the process.

So many people set out with the grandest intentions of having all these catchy-titled blog posts with amazing photographs, eye-catching formatting and witty prose, but they get de-motivated when they have to start from scratch.

They throw the towel in when they need to actually go out, get some pictures for the article, sit down for several hours per week to plan and write their dream blog posts, SEO-format the text and all the other nuts and bolts that make up a successful piece.

Do you think Michelangelo got in a huff when he had to climb up ladders and chill on a ceiling for four years to complete his work in the Sistine Chapel? Well, yes, probably. And you're not Michelangelo. But let's not dwell on that - you know what I'm getting at.

If you want to become a blogging pro, you've got to love the work that it takes and that becomes so much easier when you are also in love with whatever it is you write about.

4. Reach out to people

When I was getting started out, I followed as many bloggers as I could find. I'd message them, like all their stuff, read their blogs and just interact with them.

This sounds a bit generic I know, but just casting your net out, being interested in what other people are doing and generally just being a sound person will get you far in the blogging game.

I've actually met up with a load of bloggers in real life from doing this and it genuinely is a great way to meet people who are probably a lot different to the types of pals you normally gravitate towards.

Being active and always checking out other bloggers' content is also a great way to steal ideas. Don't tell anyone I said that though...

5. You want collabs? Email, email, email

So many bloggers are scared out of their minds to approach brands. They daren't email or message companies they want to with out of fear of being rejected, laughed at or blacklisted (which is an absolute myth).

I used to email the likes of Ted Baker, Rolex and John Lewis pitching for collabs when I had less than 500 followers. Hell, I rang the Gucci head office to try and get a meeting with the marketing director even before that!

This is the sort of embarrassing self belief you need to have in what you do and what you can offer. It goes without saying that I obviously didn't get anywhere with these brands, but since then, I've sent over 5,000 emails and had all sorts of collabs as a result.

I even worked with the Lisbon Tourist Board when I had less than 1,000 followers on Insta! It just goes to show, if you know how to pitch, you are clear and confident in what you can offer and most importantly - you send out an absolute boatload of emails, you'll get the partnerships that you're after. It's a numbers game, simple as that.

I know people will say it's not all about freebies and getting paid as they gallop off on their high horse with their zero readers - and they're sort of right to be fair. If you're in it for fame, freebies and money, you're probably not gonna get any of those.

That being said, collabs are a great way to boost your profile, get more readers (thus helping/entertaining more people with your content), making somewhat of a living online and having nice things in exchange for a few hours of your time.

Why not go for them? Don't be one of those sourpusses who is too afraid to go after what they want and then scorns others for doing so. Just go balls to the wall and start whacking those emails out.

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That's pretty much that gang.

They are my 5 best tips. Hopefully this advice for new bloggers has really helped you in your quest to start and grow your very own little corner of the internet.

I don't think there's many better things than having a space where you can be truly yourself without having to care what anyone else says or does.

And it doesn't matter whether the blog ever takes off because you'll always have it to look back on and be proud of for even having a go and having the bottle to do everything by yourself.

But enough of that motivational nonsense. That's the loser's mentality. Go out there, implement my tips and smash the backside off it will ya!

Be sure to follow me on socials to keep up with the daily goings on of The Man Blueprint. You can also sign up for my inner circle using the newsletter form above. Just drop your email in there and it’s job done. Completely free and completely brilliant. Whilst you’re here, have a little browse of some other article you might like below too. You won’t regret it.

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