I am currently reading a recently launched blog – Sofa Moolah (got to love the name) it caught my attention as I was following one of the guys who has put it together on twitter.

Now it is a blog about making money online, and it is brand new. It is not the wealth of information that you get from a blog like shoemoney as it has only just had the go button pushed, so literally only has one or two posts made to it so far.

For subscribing you can download a free 20 page ebook by Mat Carpenter. It really just covers off some of the insights he had learned from his addtodesign blog when he started it up (he now no longer owns it). There is a few gems in there that anyone into blogging or just starting out can learn from.

It did strike a chord with me, mostly because it is very much akin to what I do with my own online guest posting and article writing. I certainly don’t use the potential of social networks and social bookmarking anywhere near the potential they have, but in regards to guest posts, I am on the same page. I don’t see a guest post as a chance to spruike my site. Rather, I use it as a way of building my reputation and authority as a designer. Mostly just having the link to my site or my twitter account under my name in the article credit is enough to drive some pretty healthy traffic to my website.

And the idea of pre-generating posts to appear at a later date is one that I have to agree with. I started doing that for myself a few years back after looking at comic-press and seeing you could set an appearance date for a post so you were covered whilst you are on holiday or having a few up your sleeve so you are covered in times of sickness so you can push the go button and not have to try and work whilst sick.

I am looking forward to seeing the posts they are planning on putting up on sofa moolah, as I like picking up new tips or ideas to apply to my own website. And if any of them help build up a bit of extra income for me, well, I would not mind one iota.

Hopefully I will catch up with you in the article comments section over there!

Now that I am busy with the end of financial year rush of work, I have had to take stock of exactly what I have achieved so far this year.

Having set myself some pretty lofty goals at the beginning of the year, the rewards were on par. If I hadn’t given myself a set of rewards of things I either really want (or want to have an excuse to buy) I doubt I would have maintained my drive to try and complete these goals. You can get stuffed if you try and tell me it is all about the journey and not the final prize! As humans we need a reason to strive for something, wether it is being in competition with someone, a glittering prize or the adoration of our peers (who hasn’t wished for that!).

Just to give you a sample of the rewards and goals so far, better house, holiday in the sun, holiday in the sun during winter, new laptop, complete a full website redesign, gain five hundred followers in twitter, get to the first page in search results, complete the first draft of my ebook on graphic design and going through all my old work samples and backing them up.

There are many more rewards and goals that I have on a list to refer to. Some are really long term, like complete my Masters in Graphic Design, and others are more monetary based, like complete my ebook and start selling it.

I have keyed some rewards to help stave off burning myself out, like once the ebook is done and up for sale and is actually making sales, I am going to take a short holiday with the family. And at no time am I allowing myself to be doing any work!

What sort of goals and rewards do you set yourself?

Even if it is a case of ‘Complete the book layout for the index section and I am rewarding myself with a cup of coffee and two tim tam biscuits’ good ideas for goals and rewards can help us all stay motivated longer.

The first vector file I am releasing through this website is linked below, just click on the graphic to download a PDF of the vector artwork.

As the first of many planned releases, let me know what you think, and if there is anything specific you might be after.

I am planning on having free as well as premium files available for download in future.

Click on the image below to download a PDF of the vector artwork.