Making progress with your home business can be a frustrating experience. Sometimes it all goes so smoothly, but other times you’re just stuck. Why is that?

I believe that one of the big reasons is that it’s so easy to let the past rule what you’re doing now and what you plan for the future. Just think about it. All those habits you’ve built. Are they all still productive?

Sometimes what worked in the past will hold you back later on. It just isn’t good enough anymore. If you’re still relying on the tried and true, even as it becomes less effective, you’re going to work yourself into a rut.

For example, I just rewrote my work schedule the other day. It’s a pretty lightweight schedule, focusing on general tasks I want to work on each day. I had long since quit following the old one, but hadn’t done anything about a new schedule.

Having a good schedule does amazing things for productivity, though.

Similarly, you may find a particular marketing tactic just isn’t working anymore. You can’t let your pay per click ads just stay the same forever, for example. You’ll often get better click through rates and quality scores if you keep on testing. You can let an ad that is converting well sit for a time, but then it’s time to check things over and try something new.

Your past failures can also hold you back. Maybe something didn’t work for you, and you’ve just never gone back and tried it again. You may have struggled with pay per click advertising, article marketing, commenting on blogs or forums, and gotten poor results.

If you haven’t looked at why you failed at one of these, perhaps it’s time. Take a look and figure out what you can do to make it work this time around. Maybe this time the whole thing will click and you’ll have a new source of traffic and leads.

Don’t try more than one new thing, or retry more than one thing you’ve done before, at a time. Most people get overwhelmed by trying to do too many new things at once, and you increase your odds of failure. Give yourself a chance to focus on picking up that skill while still working with the old ones that work for you.

A lot of people get into blogging for money because they hear about the fantastic success some people have enjoyed. It’s hard to not envy someone who is earning 5, 6 or even 7 figures a year from their blog.

Trouble is, for many people earning the way someone else does becomes their sole focus. They do their best to copy the successful people they see around them, rather than be themselves.

The biggest problem with imitating the more successful bloggers around you is that it’s easiest to be nothing more than an imitation. You don’t stand out. And if you don’t stand out, you’re not going to get people interested in what you have to say.

It’s one thing to take occasional inspiration from those who are doing better than you are. But if that’s the only thing you do, you’ll have more trouble developing your own voice.

Be aware of what others in your niche are doing, but find ways to stand out. Take a controversial position. Have fun. Worry less about what’s working for others and figure out what works for you.

The thing about blogging is that you can learn quite a bit about what successful bloggers are doing, and still not succeed with your own blog. You’re different people, after all, and the different approaches you take to similar tasks will not get you the same results.

If you really need to compare yourself to someone, take a look at the people who are at your same level of the game. Watch the people who are doing exceptionally well, if you like, but in many ways your most direct competition comes from the people who know about as much as you do.

Even then you don’t want to focus too much on what the other people are doing. You should be focused more on what you can do.

So What Should You Be Doing?

There are some things you absolutely need to get done to succeed as a blogger.

1. Develop your own voice.

You don’t want to sound like everyone else. Be yourself. Have your own style and your own opinions. If you love covering industry news, cover it. If you don’t, leave it alone except when it catches your attention.

2. Write for your blog – a lot!

Many of the most successful blogs are posted to more than once a day. Sure you can get away with less, but you may get less attention.

Don’t overdo! You can annoy readers if you are writing so fast that you forget quality in favor of quantity. Or if you just provide too much information for them to read. There’s a balance to be struck, and it’s up to you to decide what that balance is.

3. Comment on other blogs.

Yes, this takes away from your writing time. But it’s a great way to network with your fellow bloggers and get visitors.

Don’t worry about whether the links to your site are “do follow” or “no follow.” Don’t constantly link to your own posts within the body of your comments. Don’t be self promotional in general.

Be a genuine contributor. Your comments will stick better and bring better attention to your blog.

4. Don’t start too many blogs.

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and start up blog after blog. But it’s not going to do you as much good if you can’t maintain quality on all of them. Run just one blog until you really know what you’re doing. Then decide if another one is something you need to start.

Am I perfect with these? Heck no! I post on this particular blog far less than I should, but I have others that are more of a focus for me. I have also dropped blogging on sites that I simply do not have time for right now. As my personal life changes I may pick them back up, but for right now they’re on the back burner.

And of course I sometimes wish I could succeed as wildly as certain other bloggers. But I don’t let that get in the way of working on my blogs in my way.

I admit it. I enjoy blogging for my business. It’s a great way to bring in regular traffic, recommend products and make sales. But not only is it not for everyone, it’s not for every kind of product.

Take one of my sites, for example. No blog, just information on the product. Earns in the $1000 range many months. My own efforts for it are much less than for blogs I have that earn less. The topic changes little enough that I’d be hard pressed to write about it regularly. It’s an obvious choice for a static site, updated only as needed.

But if you’re going to be adding information regularly, running the site as a blog or even just using it as a backend and making your site look like a static site is a very good idea. Blogging software combined with Feedburner or other services makes it easy to offer RSS feeds and email updates to your website. You get more chances to bring people back to your site. Why wouldn’t you want that?

The trouble with blogging is that it is time intensive. Sure you can hack out a quickie post in a couple minutes if you need to. But can you do it regularly enough? Will it be interesting enough? Will anyone even care?

Planning is Key

No matter which route you choose, you should work up a plan so that you know how much you’ll be working your site. Don’t assume that you’ll have the energy to do 10 posts a day, every day. That’s a tough schedule to maintain, especially if you plan on quality to go with that quantity. But even just a few posts a week can be enough to make a good blog.

Before you really try to get things started, write out a few posts. Don’t have them be on topics that must be posted immediately. Use them to fill in the blanks as you figure out a realistic work schedule for yourself.

It takes much the same if you’re planning a static site. A one-page site is suitable for some purposes, but not for others.

Draw People Back to Your Site

Since many sales are not made by the first impression, you need to have some way to draw visitors back to your website. On a blog it is easy to make prominent links to subscribe to the RSS feed or by email. Some bloggers even place the suggestion to subscribe at the bottom of each post. This is a very natural placement, as visitors will have just finished reading and may be feeling like hearing more from you.

But don’t give up on this with a static website. You can offer an ecourse that expands on your topic and keeps your offer in front of your subscribers. Keep the information useful to keep your subscribers reading.

It’s Up to You

Despite its many advantages, blogging isn’t the right choice for every business. It takes more of a commitment to regular content production, and if that’s not your business model it’s not going to work.