In my most recent quest to build a blog, live and in realtime, and make $1,000 with it in under thirty days I decided to employ a tactic used as far back as 1908 when the Viennese architect Adolf Loos wrote Ornament and Crime.

The personal manifesto.

For those of you who are interested in reading my seven step manifesto, or simply interested in keeping an eye on the aforementioned quest, click here. Just keep in mind that what you find is heavily under construction and full of page errors and falling rocks. Well, perhaps not the latter, but that’s the whole point of doing something live. Everything is out there in the public eye.

Laying out your intentions in a public way, perhaps on an individual page of your blog, allows your readers to gain an understanding of what is important to you. And, maybe more importantly, it acts as an inescapable motivational tool for you.

Your manifesto doesn’t have to be long, it doesn’t even have to be detailed. It just has to be able to stand up as an honest and open point of reference, both for you and your readers.

When your readers are able to see what you are planning, either personally or within the confined of a particular blog, they are more likely to come back, again and again, to see whether or not you have achieved your goals. I’ve always maintained that personal blogs are successful simply because they are personal.

People are inherently interested in people. That will never, ever, change.

Let you readers know who you are and what you stand for. They will respect you for it. And if you have the respect of your audience the world is your oyster.