Blogging Tips : Perseverance Will Save Your Blog

Robby G is a blogger from ShiteILike.com and explains the benefits of pushing your blog through good and through bad.

I was doing some research recently, wondering if my blog would ever take off and what it really depended on. I was a little bit discouraged about writing lots of content for two months on my blog, but having a significant amount of less traffic than on my friend’s blog which is only two months older than mine.

To see if my blog would ever receive any readers that would get interested, and hopefully raise my hopes, I went on ProBlogger. I looked through his much older posts and went through the comment list. I clicked on a bunch of commentators’ names that took me back to their blogs and recorded how many of them were still blogging today. Their comments were from 2006 and I noticed that most of the bloggers had either just abandoned their blog or quit paying for hosting completely.

Now the interesting stuff I learnt from my research was that the ones that actually held on to their blogs and kept posting through good and through bad on topics that they found dear to them, they in fact had a pretty decent following with many RSS Subscribers and were receiving quite a few comments on each post. I also ran their blogs through a Link Checker and saw that the older the blog, the more backlinks they had.

The great thing about perseverance when it comes to blogging is that the longer you push your blog, the more you get out of it. It doesn’t matter what topic you write about, because there are a lot of people out there that have the same interests as you no matter what they are.

Perseverance gives your blog backlinks, it gives your blog a higher rating on search engines, and it gives people time to learn more about you and spread your blog’s name through word of mouth. If you read this blog and a bunch of other “making money online” blogs, it opens your mind out to how to market your blog properly, and if you connect perseverance to marketing, there is no stopping you. All that’s left is time to allow someone big and famous to come along and mention your blog in a review or just mention a little bit about your post to really help you explode onto the Super Blogger level.

So all in all, in my opinion, there are really just two things every blogger should keep in mind when either starting a new blog or whenever they’re discouraged about their own blog:

1. Make sure you’re blogging about a topic you really love (I know this one has been said before by almost everyone, but it’s true. Shite I Like is my second blog for a reason.)
2. Whatever you do, don’t give up. Keep blogging and blogging, and reading, and blogging. The more time you put into it will really come back to help you 100 times more in the long-run. And you just might never know when your blog will turn huge.

Also, if you’ve got the time to blog on a topic on an almost daily basis, you more than likely have the time to do research of your own on how to market and make your blog popular without having to really spend much money on it.

Many people’s biggest flaw in life is entering into something thinking that easy money will just flow their way, and once the going gets even a little bit difficult, they abandon ship. For example, when I was going to University and Real Estate College at the same time, I thought I’d become a Real Estate Salesperson in no time and start selling houses in the summer time while everybody from University would be working some landscaping summer job. Becoming a Real Estate person was harder than I thought and took much more time than initially planned. At many points I thought about quitting that and just focusing on Univ, but perseverance got me through College to get into the field of Real Estate as a part-time job while still continuing with my Univ studies. I’m happy I pushed myself, because now I see that if I could keep a weekend job while going to University and College all at the same time, while also learning about blogging, then I can push myself to blog on a regular basis.

Keep those 2 points I outlined above in mind and make sure to always keep pushing yourself, because without perseverance you’ll never see any glory. I hope this post really gave you a motivation to keep blogging and reading and most importantly believing that all you need to reach your goal with blogging is constant determination, time, and a little bit of luck.

Blogging Tips : Don’t Give Up and Keep Cool

This is a guest post by Alexander Sandler. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

I want to share a story that had happened to me. Perhaps someone will find it useful in the future. If not, I hope that you will at least find it interesting.

I have a blog. I like writing, so I always had blogs, journals, web-sites, etc. My latest creation is a blog about programming and administrating Linux. Anyway it was all about writing something that someone else can find useful. This continued for about a year until one day I figured out that I can actually make some money from this hobby of mine.

I ran into some blogger who claimed to make 150$ a month from his blog. It sounded terrific considering the fact I spend 30$ a month and hours of my time, on the blog, without seeing a penny.

I read stories of people who made hundreds and even thousands of dollars a month from their web-sites, by simply writing and promoting their content. Internet is full such of stories. Albeit the hobby, there are things that I would love to have, but cannot afford from one reason or another. Earning them by doing something that I love to do, sounded like a dream becoming reality.

I began researching and found that monetizating your web-site is fairly easy. Opening AdSense account takes minutes. Finding right Wordpress plug-in and placing some ads with that plug-in takes some effort, but its not a big deal as well.

Obviously my early ads setup earned me just a few bucks a month. I began looking for ways to improve this status quo and found the answers I was looking for, with ease. Internet marketing is a very popular talk theme on the internet.

I found web-sites giving advice, free e-books and forums with live people that were ready to help. Amount of information available on the subject is truly overwhelming, but I managed to bring it down to just three things.

1. Find a niche that matches your interests the most and make a web-site on the subject. When writing, stick to your niche.
2. Think about your visitors. What do they want?
3. Experiment, experiment and experiment.

I thought to myself, what’s the best way to match these three bullets and eventually decided to do a couple of things. At a time, my web-site had more personal touch. I posted pictures I’ve made and talked about things that I myself care about. I decided to concentrate on main theme of my web-site and leave personal stuff aside.

I also changed the name of the web-site and added a new domain name. I changed the way visitors are navigating throughout the web-site and added links that allow navigation inside of large posts.

I did all that in one week. It didn’t take long time to see the results. Number of visitors to my web-site has dropped to nearly negative. It seemed like people are not visiting my web-site, but rather running away….

It took me over a month to fix the results of my experimenting frenzy. Apparently, everything I did, I did the wrong way. Adding domain name requires proper 301 redirect. I simply pointed new domain name to old web-site, making my entire web-site duplicate content. Apparently, Google can’t make a difference between bad guys and naive guys and immediately penalized my web-site.

At a time, I didn’t know how to use AdSense channels. So I removed the most effective ads. Changes in navigation didn’t come up very well neither. The idea was nice, but what I did was totally broken, and today, two months later I still find and fix navigation issues.

Obviously I fixed nearly everything. I fixed duplicate content issues and asked Google to reconsider my web-site. It takes them few weeks, but I waited patiently. I fixed navigation issues.

Monetization of the web-site is broken until this day and I am not in a rush to fix it. I’m learning my options and I hope I’ll make right choices when time comes. In the meantime, people are coming to see my web-site and I can live with just that for now.

I read somewhere that a crisis like this is a natural. You cannot build something good and solid without getting few bruises along the way. There are two very important lessons I’ve learned from this experience.

1. Don’t give up. Being strong and persistent is a fundamental part of succeeding in anything. This is especially true about web-sites, with their search engines issues, hackers and tough competition.

2. Keep your head cool. Don’t let others tell you what is the best for you. Think by yourself. Check things. Question everything. And never rush into trying new things without knowing and understanding all possible implications.

You can read more from Alexander on his blog, Alex on Linux - a blog about programming and administrating Linux.

Blogging Tips : Run a Town Hall Meeting on Your Blog and Increase Reader Engagement

Here’s a quick tip that I think a lot of bloggers could learn from - run a ‘town hall’ meeting on your blog.

The inspiration from this comes from Digg who are periodically run a ‘Town Hall’ webcast for their members.

The idea is simple - Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson from Digg periodically do a webcast for their members that gives information on the latest news at Digg as well as answering questions from their members. They’ve been running these on a quarterly basis at Digg for over a year now - you can see them all here.

OK - so what’s this got to do with your blog?

Here’s the thing - while Digg are obviously a lot bigger than your average blog and they have more resources to throw at creating these types of Town Hall webcasts - I think bloggers can learn from the idea.

While I’ve never used the term ‘town hall’ meeting on my blogs I have periodically done similar types of things for readers where I product updates on how the blogs are going, talk about new directions and take questions.

Benefits of Town Hall Type Meetings with Blog Readers

What I’ve found is that when you communicate these types of things it can have a real impact upon your reader community in a variety of ways:

• Reader Morale - every time I do this type of exercise I see signs of reader morale lifting.
• Reader Involvement - perhaps tied to the morale of your readers is that when you communicate with them about how you’re blog is going I’ve noticed that they often will get more involved with it.
• Gives Your Blog a ‘Face’ - one of the main benefits that I’ve noticed about these sorts of sessions when I’ve done them on video using Ustream is that it gives your blog a more personal edge. Readers get to see and hear what you’re like and come away feeling a different kind of connection than they get just reading your content.
>Clearing up Misconceptions - giving readers a chance to tell you what they think of your blog and to listen to your response can help clear up misconceptions that they might have about you or your site.
• Reader Involvement - getting readers involved in your blog in any way (even if it’s just asking a question or watching a video/web cast) means that they’re investing something of themselves into your blog. What comes out of these interactions can be all kinds of great ideas that they can give you - not to mention the things you might ask them to DO in promoting your community to their own network.
• Readers Using Your Blog Better - these sorts of ‘town hall’ meetings give you an opportunity to point out features of your blog that readers might not be aware of to help them to use it better. For example, pointing out the social media bookmarking buttons on your blog, explaining how to subscribe via RSS, showing off a newsletter you produce - all of these things can deepen reader engagement/satisfaction and help you grow your blog.

While not all of your readers will be interested on the behind the scenes goings on of your blog - some will.

How do you run a TownHall meeting?

There will be many variations on doing this type of thing and I encourage bloggers to find a medium and method that works best for them. Some that come straight to mind include:

• Live Video Web Cast - a live video streaming session like the guys at Digg do. They have a pretty professional set up that will be beyond most of us but it’s pretty easy to set up a video streaming session with a site like Ustream - then all you need to do is publicize it.
• Recorded Video Session - feeling nervous about a live call? Why not ask readers to submit questions ahead of time and then record your answers on video at your own time. Edit it up and put the video on YouTube (or your favorite video hosting site) and embed it on your blog.
• Live or Recorded Audio Sessions - the same two things can be done via audio. This is perhaps a little more accessible for your audience if they don’t have bandwidth for video - or is good for those who don’t like to see themselves on camera.
• Q&A Posts - a simpler option is to call for questions in a blog post and then to write another one with your answers.
• Chat Sessions - I know a few bloggers who have weekly times that they tell their readers they’ll be in a chat room attached to their blog. These sessions are for general chat but often have a Q&A section where readers ask about the topic of the blog as well as questions about the site.

Have you ever run a town hall type meeting for the readers of your blog? How did you do it? What were the challenges and benefits?

Blogging Tips : Reading Books Is Still Necessary

Blogging Tips

Reading Books Is Still Necessary, But Are You Reading Them?

Last Monday we had a poll asking the readers whether or not they still consider reading books to be necessary for personal and professional success. Over 250 people voted, and the results are illustrated in the image below:

As you can see, the vast majority of people still consider reading books essential. My personal opinion goes on the same direction. We also had plenty of insightful comments on that post.

Here is one from Alex Iskold (Alex is a really successful web entrepreneur):

Reading books is important because information consumed via a book is different from the one online. Book consumption is systematical and complete. The online consumption is search-driven, interruptable and overall attention-deprived.

The whole notion that you can understand the world in byte-size chunks without giving it deep thought is pretty broken, in my opinion.

Here is another one from Madeline:

Reading books for “personal and professional success” is more important now than ever for (in my mind) one main reason: empathy.

It’s so easy to read a tidbit of information and judge others quickly. I think it’s important, now more than ever, that we try to understand other viewpoints: cultural, business, religious, and more.

Reading a book written by a person who has a completely different viewpoint and set of circumstances, and feeling by the end of the book that you understand where they are coming from and why they would act the way they did is a priceless, mind-opening experience.

And I can’t think of another way to accomplish it, apart from having good friends who can impart it to us - which I’m guessing most of us don’t.

Examples of people I’ve learned to relate to by books alone:
- orthodox Mormons
- mothers of stillborn children
- mother of serial killer
- hermaphrodite
- someone living in a communist country
- someone living in a violent relationship

I don’t know any of the above except through books, but I feel I can empathize, even though I may not truly understand or agree.

Even the people who answered “No, books are not necessary” pretty much agreed that books have their value.

So reading books is important and necessary, but are you reading them?

I can speak for myself and say that I read much less than what I feel I should. Despite setting ambitious goals at the beginning of every year, I always end up reading 12 or so books, so one book every month.

This is what I consider to be the very minimum number of books that anyone should read. People that are top of their game usually read a lot more, say 30 or even 40 books every year.

This year I am aiming for 20 books. We will see how it goes.

What about you. Are you reading how much you think you should? If not, why not?

Blogging Tips : Rise Of The Blogging Service Industry

In this guest post, Neil Matthews from WPDude.com writes about the rise of the blogging service industry, and how bloggers can use their existing skills to enter this lucrative industry.

Blogging has moved away from a niche activity to such an extent that it has spawned it’s own service industry. There are numerous activities and companies supporting the blogger.

The market is huge, with hundreds of millions of blogs in existence and thousands more being created each day, there is an insatiable need for blogging skills, something the experienced blogger can use to their financial advantage.

I would like to present you the various sectors of the service industry and how you can use your existing skills to enter the industry.

Theme Development

If you have experience designing and modify the theme of your blog, you already have the skills to become a theme developer.

The routes available to you are to develop a premium theme such as Thesis and sell if from your own site. A second option would be to set yourself up as a service company selling bespoke theme design and development services.

People want individual blogs, not standard themed “Just another WordPress blog” blogs. For many Probloggers a target is to have their own bespoke theme built for them. This requires theme developers.

Plugin Development

Do you have computer development skills? If you do you can string together the code to write a plugin, there is place for you in the blogging service industry.

Plugin developers can make their money in two ways, much like bloggers, directly and indirectly.

The direct method is to write a plugin and charge for it. The majority of plugin in circulation are free, but there are a growing number out there which are for profit. They tend to be larger and more complex. The paid for plugins I have used include a mailing list and a membership site plugin.

The second method is to develop plugins, distribute and support them for free and use them as a showcase for your technical skills. This is excellent social proof that you have the ability to develop blogs and can lead to other development jobs.

Coaching & Consulting

As I mentioned there are millions of blogs, and many of these blogs owners needs support from blogging experts.

Well know bloggers such as Chris Garrett and Michael Martine offer consulting services to their clients on the back of their very successful blogs.

If you have the skills and know-how to coach people or companies on their blogging strategy/problems, then this is a route into the blogging service industry with a low barrier to entry. All you need is some social proof that you know what you are talking about and a website to inform potential clients of your wares. This is the sector I work in.

Copy Writing

Blogs have an insatiable thirst for content, they need to be fed with a continuous stream of words. Why not set yourself up as a blog copywriter.

Check out the PB jobs board for a small section of the work that is available. There are paid freelance writing gigs out there for good writers.

Create a portfolio of writing by developing posts on your own blog, cast the net out and guest post (for free) on other blogs and take this social proof to the market to prove you can write quality content

Books

A quick search for the word blog on Amazon, will return page after page of results on books about blogging. This is another sector of the industry which you could enter.

The skills you have learned developing content for your blog can be put towards a larger writing project. Can you take your blog posts and edit them together into a larger work? If you can develop a few hundred blogs posts, then you have the skills to string them together into a book length piece of work.

I understand that a couple of up and coming bloggers called Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett (no I’ve not heard of them either) did just that. They wrote a book on blogging called ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

The only thing I would say about writing about a dynamic medium like blogging is to make it timeless. The time to press for a book can make your manuscript out of date before it is in the hands of your readers. I have read a number of blogging books only to come away thinking that was yesterdays news and techniques.

Consider writing a book for your niche. Blogging for {INSERT NICHE HERE} books may be viable way to service the blogging industry.

Graphic Designers

If you are handy with Photoshop, there are a huge number of opportunities to service bloggers. We need logo design services, 125×125 banner ads, fancy RSS logos, even the latest tools such as Twitter need graphic designers to create home page backgrounds.

Whilst blogging is predominantly a text based medium, it still required a lot of imagery for the presentation layers of those millions of blogs.

Check out freelancing sites such as elance.com for graphic design gigs.

Other Bigger Services

There are other sides to the blogging service industry which is probably out of reach for most bloggers to enter but well worth a mention anyway and these are the large infrastructure services underpinning blogging. These include:

• Syndication services e.g. Feedburner
• Hosting - Deamhost,Godaddy to name just two
• Advertising - Adsense and Chitika,
• Blogging platforms- Blogger, Wordpress.com

If you have the benefit of a generous Angel Investor and the next big idea for bloggers, there is a large enough audience to enter the infrastructure side of the industry.

Conclusion

There is a brand new service industry out there servicing an abundance of blogs, getting a slice of this industry should be easy for people like us; the early to mid level adopters of blogging. Remember as the medium becomes more and more mainstream, there will be more and more blogs and more and more opportunities.

If you can establish yourself as the blogging expert in your niche, not just a blog writing expert in your niche there is money to be made from a fertile market.

Blogging tips : Using Your Blog as a Job Search Tool

This is a guest post by Boris Epstein. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

A prominent blogger recently proclaimed that any professional who considers himself to be a top performer in his field has a blog. So if you don’t have a blog, you must not be a top performer. With more and more employers buying into that statement, the establishment and maintenance of a blog is becoming as important a part of the job search process as is having a clean resume or nailing your interviews. By establishing and maintaining a blog you:

• Set yourself apart from other job seekers
• Show your expertise in a niche field
• Show you are keeping up with the times and are able to display your understanding of the happenings in your industry
• Establish yourself as a source of information, not just a name on paper
• Attract others with the same interests as you, allowing you to grow your professional network

So now that you’ve established a blog, what are the key dos and don’ts to ensure your blog will help you land that dream job?

DOs

1. Include links to your up-to-date resume in multiple formats – Word, PDF and HTML. This helps you to be found on the internet and more likely to be contacted should somebody reading your blog have a job opportunity in mind for you.

2. Include links to your social networks – Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Make sure these links are on the front page and visible to your readers. This shows your reader base that you’re tapped into the community they’re also a part which helps them develop a sense of comfort with you.

3. Let your readers inside your head and be absolutely genuine. Discuss problems and case studies related to your profession and solve them by providing a step by step approach. Discuss and comment on the latest happenings related to your profession. Talk about admirable companies and professionals related to your market.

4. Give insight into your personal life. Discuss stories and include pictures of your family, friends, pets, just make sure to keep the pictures and personal content PG (ok maybe PG-13 but definitely not R). Nowadays companies like to hire people they feel comfortable with and who has a life outside of work. The more interesting you are, the more likely an employer will want you to be a part of their team.

5. Keep it politically correct. A good rule of thumb is to keep your blog grandma or business dinner table friendly. If you wouldn’t be proud to have your grandma read it or say it at a business dinner table, better be safe and don’t post it.

6. Keep an updated blogroll. These sites should be relevant to your profession. Include a separate category for personal interests.

7. Stay active in commenting. If someone makes a comment on your blog, answer them. This way you are able to have interaction with your readers.

8. Keep a regular update schedule. If time allows post daily or every other day.

DON’Ts

1. Bad mouth, rant or complain about previous employers.

2. Promote your blog if it’s not up to date.

3. Discuss religion, politics or sex – follow all dinner table rules.

4. Post inappropriate photos.

5. Make it look too corporate with ads. You’re not a sports star you don’t need a sponsor .

6. Discuss issues specific to your current employer. Most employers wouldn’t like it.

7. Ramble on in your posts – keep them short, sweet and to the point.

Boris Epstein is the CEO and Founder of BINC, a Professional Search and Software Marketplace. As a professional recruiter Boris shares his thoughts about the recruitment industry, job hunting and career advice over at AskBinc.com.

Blogging Tips : What’s Your Bread and Butter?

this guest post is by Dot Com Dud

In business, the phrase “Bread & Butter” is used to describe something that is core to the success of a business. A good example is a lawyer for whom divorce cases bring in the majority of their income, those cases are their Bread & Butter. Without these cases they would be struggling to fill their workload and bring in an income.

When it comes to posting quality content for your blog you should be careful not to forget your Bread & Butter either. In the case of blogs posts your Bread & Butter are usually posts which are regular features that tie-in to the core topic of the blog. By identifying these posts you can make your work as a blogger a lot easier as well as making your blog’s appeal to readers much more consistent.

Why are Bread & Butter posts important?

Bread & Butter posts help identify what your blog is about, they are the kind of posts that your regular readers will come to expect from your blog. These posts can become your blog’s trademark because readers will associate them with your blog and they will in turn become a part of your brand.

Another advantage of Bread & Butter posts is that you usually wont need a flash of inspiration to write a Bread & Butter post. You’ll know when they need to be posted and what they need to be about, so the hard part is done for you. Not only do they give your blog structure but they will help shape your work flow and the other posts around them.

Examples of Bread & Butter?

A well known example of Bread & Butter posts are income reports on Make Money Online blogs. These work because they appeal to the targeted audience of the MMO niche and they can be relied upon to get the attention of readers.

Some other examples of common Bread & Butter posts on blogs of different topics include;

Progress Updates - These don’t have to be on Make Money blogs only, there are a lot of personal development blogs that would be ideal for regular progress updates.

Regular Reviews - Movies, weekly TV shows, sporting matches etc. Anything that occurs often or on a regular schedule is ideal for posts like this and can be easily used as a basis for an entire blog.

Reoccurring Prizes - If you give away prizes on a regular basis, you can utilise these to create Bread & Butter posts. For each competition you can include an announcement posts, a sponsor “shout out”, a prize update (planned from the start) and naturally the prize drawing. Contests can also feed into progress update posts if they are long running or have specif criteria for the entrants to be informed of (such as a points scoreboard).

Weekly Roundups - Not everyone agrees with the value of having regular posts consisting solely of link lists to your week’s best posts or news from around your niche but they are common enough and usually become a staple for the blog that use them.

Whats your Bread & Butter?

The answer to this question will be different for almost every blog out there, what is important is knowing how to identify the kinds of posts that make up your core blog content.

Once you’ve done this you can start planning your content around them and focus on what makes them successful, so that you can adapt this into new potential Bread & Butter posts.

Ask Yourself:

• Which posts are the most popular? Follow your readers!
• Look at your categories and see which have the most content, these posts already make up your core content
• Are you repeatedly posting about the same topic, why not make them a permanent feature?

You can also run a survey with your readers to find out their favorite posts and what they’d like to see more of. It’s important to remember that a potential post must have longevity if it’s going to become reoccurring content.

In closing, I have only written about the Bread & Butter concept in regards to blog posts but there are plenty of other areas that this idea can be applied to. There are Bread & Butter advertisers, traffic sources, affiliate programs and more but the goal is the same; find out what works, what is reliable and repeatable, then use it to your advantage!

Blogging Tips : The Unlimited Freelancer [Ebook Review]

I recently asked my followers on Twitter how many of them were currently looking for more work. The response was overwhelming with many expressing that they were looking at different types of freelance work.

Today Jade Craven from the Prolific Writer reviews an ebook by the name of The Unlimited Freelancer which is designed to help freelancers grow their businesses.

If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ve probably heard of James Chartrand. He’s one of the killer writers behind Men With Pens. He started out by producing great content and networking prolifically. He now writes for Copyblogger and has created a business that brings in over $200,000 in revenue every year.

James has joined Mason Hipp - editor of Freelance Folder - to create a resource that promises to “take your freelancing to the next level and turn it into a full-fledged, thriving business you can enjoy for years to come.”

In this review, I will examine how you can apply to principles from The Unlimited Freelancer to grow your blog to the next level.

The e-book covers three main topics.

1. Systems, Software, and Automation
2. Building a Freelance Team
3. Revenue-Generating Assets

Lets look at each in turn.

Systems, Software, and Automation

The Unlimited Freelancer cover processes for:

• Managing Projects Using Systems
• Automating Your Accounting
• Systematizing Your Communications
• Marketing Automation and Systems

There are the specific topics I felt would be of most use to bloggers – they do cover many more. They detail:

• Programs to use for project management. Bloggers could use this to plan a blog launch or when developing a specific aspect of their site
• Ideas to automate the accounting: You can learn ideas to use should you need to pay affiliates or content writers.
• How to systemize communications and marketing. Outside of the blogosphere, you may need to communicate with customers, potential customers, businesses and vendors. This section gives you a framework so you can focus your attention on building your business.

Building a Freelance Team

This chapter details how freelancers can leverage their time to get more results. The idea is to outsource simpler tasks to other members of your team so you can devote more billable hours to your clients.

This includes:

• Outsourcing tasks to other members of your team, who get paid less per hour due to handle some of the easier, routine tasks
• Partnering with those who have skills that compliment your own, so you have a larger share of the market.
• Cross sourcing with other freelancers when you have a heavy workload.

Both their sites are examples of expanding their team. The Men With Pens team have expanded to include two additional freelancers. Mason Hipp regular hires other contributors who bring their unique knowledge and experience with over 10’000 RSS readers.

This chapter also applies to the new bloggers. If you don’t have the money for outsourcing, you can partner with another blogger and exchange your writing skills. As your blog grows, you will need to focus on the work that brings you the highest return on investment

Revenue-Generating Assets

Much of this chapter would be quite familiar to seasoned Problogger readers. Fortunately, instead of examining each asset in minute detail, they concentrate on how freelancers can adopt a business-like approach to creating a product. They discuss:

• How to find the right asset for your business.
• How to build an asset
• Resources for creating and selling your products

This is relevant to bloggers because we often create the free content first, before creating a paid product. As this chapter demonstrates, it is often worth developing a revenue generating asset at the start so you can focus more of your time on unpaid projects.

Combine Strategies for Unlimited Potential

The final chapter details how you can put the core information together to create a self-sustaining business

As a freelance blogger, this chapter was my favourite. It really unified the previous chapters and gave me an insight into the minds of successful freelancers. It really demonstrated that if you want real success, you should treat your freelancing - or blog - as a business rather than another form of self employment.

Would I recommend it?

I would highly recommend this ebook to anyone who create a business based around their blog. Bloggers are exchanging their time for money but unlike freelancers, they are exchanging their time for anticipated income. Its value packed offering 200 pages of information for $29. I’ve paid a lot more for products that offer much less value. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody.

This book isn’t for:

• Those who are expecting extensive blogging advice. The book focuses on business advice for writers, and those looking to hire writers.
• Those who want their hand held. The authors do their best to provide a solid framework but there is only so much you can say in 200 pages. They give the comprehensive advice needed to make individual business decisions.
• Those who are just hoping for success, rather than planning for it.

If you aim to monetize via services, or have plans to expand your blog, then you should read The Unlimited Freelancer. If you can’t justify the expense you can check out the great content at Freelance Folder and Men With Pens.

Over to you

I offered to review this e-book because i felt that the Problogger audience could gain a lot from the authors experience. I know however that people can be reluctant to buy a product based on just one review.

Have you read the Unlimed Freelancer? Did it help you change your blogging or freelancing goals? Let us know in the comments.

Learn more about this resource at The Unlimited Freelancer.

Blogging Tips : Blogging vs Twitter [A few Random Thoughts on the Two Mediums]

On Twitter yesterday Yaro asked me whether I like Twitter more than Blogging.

My reply was of course limited to 140 characters and as a result not overly comprehensive:

“no I like blogging more than Twitter but Twitter is fun and a useful part of the mix of what I do - both have their place”

I thought perhaps it was a topic worth expanding upon here on ProBlogger. While I’ve shifted most of my blogging about Twitter to TwiTip I thought it might be worth sharing a few of the thoughts on how I’m using Twitter here on ProBlogger.

What follows is both a more extended answer to Yaro (and others) but also a collection of thoughts on my experiences of working with Twitter over the last few months.

Blogging Remains My Primary Activity

While I tweet more often than I post to my blog - my blogs remain my primary focus and what I spend most time building.

It may not always seem like it when you look at the 20+ tweets that I produce a day on my twitter account but when you consider that a tweet takes seconds to write and a post can take hours - the blogs I run do take considerably more of my time and focus to produce.

My thinking around this is something that I’ve talked about previously in my description of how I use social media as outposts as opposed to my blog which I see as a home base.

In essence my use of twitter is something I do as a support to my blogging.

I guess the question will come at some point whether I will need to change this approach a little when my Twitter follower numbers go past my blog reader numbers. I suspect my approach won’t change at this point - however it’ll probably present some interesting challenges in working out priorities.

Blogging and Twitter have Different Strengths

Having said that blogging is my primary focus it is increasingly obvious to me that both mediums have their own strengths and that Twitter is able to achieve things that blogging can not (at least for me).

The immediacy of Twitter and the fact that it is a network that can spread word of a story, idea, question or thought quickly around the world to many thousands of people very quickly makes it unique.

For example one of the main ways that I find Twitter useful is getting quick feedback or answers to questions from a diverse group of people. While you can get similar feedback from a blog post Twitter is much faster. On the other hand a blog lends itself more to discussions among readers that are a little more considered, in depth and interactive (between those responding).

Blog are also great for more in depth posts. This post is a perfect illustration of this - when Yaro asked me his question on Twitter I had 140 characters to sum up a lot of different thoughts and experiences and ended up not really saying a lot whereas this post is able to explore the topic in depth.

While some people see the strengths of one and the weaknesses of the other as reason to choose between Blogging and Twitter - I’ve come to see the power of using both in tandem. The key is to know what you’re trying to achieve with your online presences and to understand what each medium can do to help you achieve this.

Twitter and Driving Traffic

I’ve written previously about the topic of Twitter driving traffic to a blog and each time have talked about how much traffic ProBlogger gets directly from Twitter. The figures have increased each time I’ve written on the topic as my own follower numbers grow and of late the numbers have continued to grow considerably.

My Google Analytics stats show that Twitter.com is now the 3rd largest referrer of traffic to this blog (only behind Google and Direct Traffic). This probably sounds a little more impressive than it is - overall it sends around 4% of my traffic (Google is 46% and Direct Traffic is 21%). This doesn’t count traffic arriving from Twitter applications - so the figure is probably closer to 10%.

My other two blogs illustrate that Twitter’s ability to send traffic is varied depending upon your site. TwiTip has over 16% of its traffic directly from Twitter.com and Digital Photography School gets 0.34% of its traffic from Twitter (although my DPS Twitter account has considerably less followers).

Twitter is Quick but Takes More Time to Use Well as Follower Numbers Grow

Actually tweeting on twitter is a relatively quick and easy process. I’ve used a variety of tools in my use of Twitter that have helped me manage the process really well - however as my number of followers has grown so does the amount of time needed to manage the account - at least if I want to remain interactive and engaging.

The number of @replies and DMs that one gets as follower numbers goes up also rises and there comes a point where a Twitter user needs to decide how interactive that they can be.

As I write this my follower numbers are just over 42,500 - to this point I still read all replies and DMs but it is becoming more and more challenging to do and I’m aware that I’m going to have to make some tough choices in the coming weeks and months if the number increases as it has.

The ReTweet is Powerful

The practice of ‘ReTweeting’ has really come into its own over the last 6 months. While people have always ‘re tweeted’ what others have tweeted - a lot more tools and services have risen up around the practice of late. Some see retweeting as a measure of authority of a twitter user - I’ve personally been more interested in its viral nature, particularly when your link is the one being retweeted.

If a link gets retweeted widely it can drive many many thousands of visitors to a blog post.

In the last few months we’ve seen more and more bloggers adding retweet buttons to their blogs in a similar way to how social media buttons are often added to blogs - I’ve done it on TwiTip with a button from Tweetmeme which has worked well but I suspect we’ll see more and more tools released.

Usefulness Remains the Key to Both Mediums

I can’t stress it enough - the key to both success in both mediums is to become the most useful resource that you can to those who you come into contact with online. Solve problems, meet needs, connect with people where they are at and both mediums will come into their own for you.

All in All….

Blogging Tips : 30 Words Originated from People’s Names

First of all let me tell you: if you are not subscribed to Daily Writing Tips, you are missing some good stuff. Some months ago I decided to step back as the editor there, and to transfer all the editorial tasks to Maeve, our English Ph.D.. Well, she has been doing a terrific work with the daily posts.

In fact today she published a really good article titled 30 Words Inspired by 29 People and An Elephant. Check the introduction:

Many eponyms derive from deliberate choices to call a product, invention, or scientific discovery after the person most closely associated with it, for example: macadam, guillotine, pasteurisation.

Sometimes scientific terms are coined to honor a famous person or a friend, for example, watt, ohm, and dahlia.

Other eponyms derive from characters in fiction, mythology, or geographical locations, for example rambo, hermaphrodite, marathon.

Eponyms I find especially interesting are those that derive not from a deliberate naming process, but from distinctive associations with specific individuals.

Here are 30 eponyms that owe their existence to something–physical features, manner of dress, writing style, profession, or behavior–associated with specific people (and one elephant).

If you want to discover the 30 words that were inspired by 29 people and an elephant, just head to the full post. I am sure you will like it.

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30 Words Originated from People’s Names

Blogging Tips : Build Upon Your Strengths as a Blogger

This post belongs to the ‘taking your blog to the next level‘ series which looks at tips for bloggers whose blogs have got a start but want to take it up a notch. Read the intro here.

Analyze why Readers Come to your Blog….. and then Build on It

The first thing that I’d highly recommend medium sized bloggers do when I speak with them is to set aside some time to analyze the current performance of their blog and particularly to focus upon the successes and strengths that the blog has.

While there’s a lot to be said for identifying a blogs weaknesses in order to improve I think many bloggers spend so much time working on improving the negatives (patching holes and fixing problems) that they fail to build upon their successes.

Here’s a ’secret’ of success that I’ve observed in quite a few successful bloggers…

They don’t do everything well, but what they do do well they keep doing it over and over again.

3 Examples of Blogs that Build Upon their Successes

Many successful blogs illustrate this principle. Let’s take a quick look at three:

* I Can Has Cheezburger - these guys are geniuses, I don’t know when they discovered that putting captions on pictures of cats would draw hundreds of thousands of readers to a blog - but when they did they focused upon that. Their blog design might not be the sexiest and they rarely write a post with more than a handful of words - but they worked out what their readers wanted and kept giving it to them. In fact they’ve taken the LOLcat formula and have rolled it out for Dogs, Celebrities, News and Politics etc.

* Post Secret - in some ways this is a similar story to I can has Cheezburger - Frank discovered that the idea of posting people’s ’secrets’ on postcards captured people’s imagination. Again - I’m not sure where the idea came from but Frank latched onto it and has continued to keep his blog focused upon what works. In fact he’s expanded the idea into books and traveling exhibitions - all focusing upon the same thing - postcard secrets.

* Smashing Magazine - this blog has seen incredible growth in the last year or two and a lot of it is by building upon what works. If you analyze their posts you see certain types of posts that are repeated again and again. Check out their post 35 examples of animals photography for example - a post filled with great images on a theme. They do these weekly and they always generate lots of interest on social media sites. In fact this ‘list’ type post isn’t just photographic - they do lists of tips, resources etc. They’ve worked out what types of posts work with their readers and they continue to apply it again and again.

I could go on with most successful blogs. They identify something that works and repeat it over and over again. This doesn’t mean that they simply repeat the same content - the key to their success is to find new ways to apply the same formulae.

So what has worked on your blog? How can you do it again and even improve upon it?
Let’s Get to Work and Do Some Analysis

Here are some questions to ponder to help you to identify these points of energy on your blog that could be worth expanding upon:
Questions about Content

* What posts have had the most traffic to them?
* What posts have had the most comments?
* What posts got the most links from other blogs?
* What posts did better than others on social media sites?

When you’ve compiled a list of these posts that did better than others - do some analysis of WHY they did well.

* Was it the topic?
* Was it the style of post?
* Was it the title that you used?
* Was it the use of an image?
* Was it the posts length?
* Was it the use of humor?

There could be any number of factors that contributed to a post’s success - but there’s usually one or two that stand out. Do this analysis on a number of successful posts and you might just discover that the same things come into play in each case. Identify what these factors are and you’re in a great position to develop more of this type of content.
Questions about Traffic

Another type of analysis to do is asking questions around the ’source’ of current traffic to your blog.

* What are the top sources of traffic to your blog?
* What other blogs or sites are linking to your content?
* What social media sites seem to be liking your content?
* What search engines send you traffic?
* What keywords are people arriving on your site as a result of searching for

Looking at the source of traffic coming to your blog is a powerful technique to help you grow your blog further.

I’ve found that when you see a significant source of traffic to a blog that there are almost always ways to build that traffic further. For example:

* When you notice a lot of traffic coming to certain posts from Google it can be helpful to optimize those pages for the keywords people are searching for to increase the traffic (looking at keyword density, linking to the page from other parts of your blog with good anchor text, tweaking titles etc).
* When you notice another blog linking up to yours there’s an opportunity to build a relationship with that blog. Get to know the blogger, thank them for the link, submit other posts that they might find useful, link up to them etc
* When you notice a social media site has been sending traffic it is a signal for you to get involved in that site. You might want to do some analysis on the type of content that does well on that site, you could educate your current readers on how to use the site, it might be worth adding a ‘voting’ button from that site to encourage readers to vote for you etc.
* When you get a lot of traffic for certain keywords from search engines it can be a hint to write more content on that topic. Pay particular attention to ‘questions’ that people are typing into search engines as these can be ready made post titles and topics to write about.

Identify Your Blogs Successes and Strengths

In this post I’ve only unpacked two types of strengths and successes that a blog might build upon (ie traffic sources and types of posts) - but there are of course a lot more. The same principles apply - once you identify something that you’re good at or something that people are responding to on your blog - keep doing it. It doesn’t mean that you can’t explore other things or improve upon weaknesses - but spend as much time building upon your success as you do in fixing weaknesses and I think you’re probably onto a good thing.

Blogging Tips : If Your Blog Died Today

If Your Blog Died Today…. What Would It Be Remembered For?

If your blog were to die today - how would it be remembered?

Here’s a little 2 part exercise that might be fun (although slightly morbid) - and hopefully insightful. You’ll need half an hour or so to do it properly.

1. Write an obituary for your blog 10 years in the future

Project yourself forward 10 years, imagine that at that point you decide to end your blog having achieved everything that you want to achieve with it and write a short obituary about your blog as you’d like other people to have seen it to that point.

Keep in mind that your blog has been as successful as it can be and you’re ending it at the peak of its game.

• What do you want people to say about your blog?
• How do you hope it will have been perceived?
• What will people miss about it the most?
• What ground has it broken?
• What has it achieved?
• How has it helped people?

Take 10 minutes to write this obituary and dare to dream big.

2. Write an obituary for your blog as it stands today

OK - back to the present. Lets just say that you blog ended today. Perhaps it was hacked, perhaps you just decided to delete it or perhaps your server died and you didn’t have a backup - the reason doesn’t matter - the exercise remains the same.

Write an obituary for your blog as you think others see it now.

• What would they say about it?
• What would people miss about it?
• What has it achieved?
• How has it fulfilled a need or service in people’s lives.
• What ground has it broken?

This exercise is one I did a few years back in another context and it was a powerful and motivating exercise. The key to it is to look at the two obituaries (the one you want people to write in the future and the one that people would write now - and to compare them and to sit with the differences.

The reality is that most of us have not yet achieved what we want to achieve with our blogs - however the question is, are we moving in the right direction to make our dreams a reality?

Many bloggers that I talk with have grand dreams and hopes - but their day to day blogging doesn’t take them closer to them.

Once you’ve compared your two obituaries - the next step is to start to put together some concrete steps that will enable you to move from the present reality to the dream for your future. These sorts of dreams don’t just happen - rather they are the result of taking daily steps towards your goals.

If you’d like to share your obituaries (or at least what you discovered in writing them) in comments below I’d be interested to see what you come up with.

Blogging Tips : The Pros and Cons of Using Video in Your Site or Blog

Last year I started experimenting with online video. I focused mostly on screencasts, doing some blog reviews and how-to videos. I liked to work with video, and found that it has many benefits. After some time I also realized that it carries some drawbacks, though. Below you will find what I learned from it.

PROS

1. Video sets you apart from the crowd. Most people are able to setup a blog and start writing text posts. Current blogging and publishing platforms make it a no-brainer even for 5-year old children. Video, on the other hand, requires a special setup (e.g., a video camera, screen capturing and editing software). Using video can therefore set your blog or site apart from the crowd.

2. Video appeals to a different audience. There is a great number of online users that prefer to watch videos over reading text content. YouTube’s popularity is no coincidence. Adding video to your site could widen your potential audience and bring new visitors aboard.

3. Video enables you to show rather than tell. Demonstrating things and explaining some concepts can be easier with video. Sites that have a good amount of how-to articles and tutorials could therefore benefit from the format.

4. Video can be more personal. Video will bring out your voice and possibly your face. Needless to say that this is a much stronger way to interact with your visitors. Secondly, if you want to develop your personal brand, video could help with that.

5. Video reaches different online channels. Given the immense popularity of online video sites, YouTube above them all, video could be used to tap into different marketing channels and new traffic generation opportunities.

CONS

1. Video requires more preparation. Casual videos can be shot on the spot. If you want to produce something more professional, however, you will need to work on the setup, script and related activities. In other words, you will need to work even before you start shooting the video.

2. Video takes time to edit and upload. Apart from preparing the video before you shoot it, you will also need to dedicate a good amount of time to the editing and uploading processes. Choosing the right format, video platform and player are also areas that will need attention.

3. Video is not optimal for search engines. Google and other search engines are evolving fast regarding how they index videos. That being said, text is still king if you want to optimize your site for organic traffic. One solution for this is to offer video transcripts, but this will require some extra work on your side.

4. Video is not suitable for all topics. Depending on the topic or type of content that you want to create, video might not be suitable at all. Lists of resources, extensive articles and detailed researches, for example, are better presented in textual format.

5. Not everyone likes video. While there are many Internet users that swear by online video, there are just as many that can’t stand it. Those are mostly people that don’t have too much time to surf the web, and who prefer to access the information in textual format, because it allows them to scan through the content, and filter only the bit of information that they need.

Overall I think it is worth a try though. Video is certainly going to be a huge part of the web in the coming years, and the sooner you get used to it, the better.

Blogging Tips : Time’s 25 Best Blogs of 2009

I woke this morning and saw a small buzz around the new Time’s list of 25 Best Blogs of 2009 . The the top of the list has the usual suspects, including The Huffington Post, LifeHacker, BoingBoing and the like. In the end you will probably find some blogs that you have never seen though. Not a bad attempt.

What got me curious, though, was the list of most overrated blogs of 2009. They were:

• TechCrunch
• Gawker
• Jim Cramer
• PerezHilton
• DailyKos

Here is why they think TechCrunch is overrated:

Launched by lawyer and tech investor Michael Arrington in 2005, TechCrunch became one of the world’s most popular blogs by reporting on the movers and shakers of Silicon Valley. But take a look at the Valley these days: Nothing’s moving. Nothing’s shaking. Born of a boom that’s long since gone bust, TechCrunch now seems irrelevant. Recent headlines such as “Box.net Hones In On Businesses With New Social Features” aren’t helping. Stick a fork in this one — it’s done.

I am not sure if I agree completely. Or at all. In fact, I would say that the Time is probably even more overrated. How so? Just take a look at the list they created. They spread 25 results in 25 different pages…. That is not a list, it is a page-view-generator. Mainstream media still needs to get a clue of what is going on the interwebs.

Blogging Tips : What Do You Spend Most Time Doing on Your Blog?

Here’s a question for a little discussion over the weekend:

“What Do You Spend Most Time Doing on Your Blog?”

Running a blog calls for all kinds of skills and activities. Writing content is probably the most obvious of these - but as I talk to different bloggers I often find that they each have their own activity that they tend to be drawn to spend more time than others. In addition to writing content - these activities might include:

• Blog Design
• Search Engine Optimization
• Guest Posting on Other Blogs
• Editing Guest Posts on Your Own Blogs
• Moderating Comments and Interacting with Readers
• Networking and Promotion to Other Bloggers
• Social Media Marketing
• Monetization
• Reading Other Blogs in your Niche
• Reading about Blogging
• Watching Statistics/Metrics

I’m sure there are more - but that list should get you started.

What do you find yourself focusing upon in your blogging at the moment? I find that I go through stages where different activities get more focus than others. For me at the moment I’ve just moved out of a phase of redesigning one of my blogs and am focusing more upon generating content (writing it myself but also editing posts of others).

Interested to hear what you’ve been focusing upon.

Blogging Tips : The Asset Value Factor of Working Online

People that want to start making money online are always wondering how much it is really possible to earn with a website, how long it takes and so on.

They are basically trying to evaluate when it would be wise to ditch their regular 9 to 5 job in favor or working full time on the Internet.

One mistake that most people make when trying to find this answer is to neglect the asset value factor. That is, when you build a blog or website, apart from the monthly revenues, your will also be gaining asset value, because your blog or website is an asset that can be sold later on.

The same is not true with a salary that comes from a 9 to 5 job. You receive a sum of money monthly and some fringe benefits, but that is it.

Let’s use some numbers to illustrate the concept.

Suppose you have a person that has a 9 to 5 job that pays $1,500 monthly. That same person started developing a website a while ago, and if she was able to dedicate herself full time to the website, it would earn $1,000 monthly.

Doing both things at the same time is not possible, because each requires full time attention.

Which one should her choose?

Most people would say the 9 to 5 job, because it pays 50% more. After one year, the 9 to 5 job would yield $18,000 while the website would yield only $12,000.

The problem with this reasoning is the fact that it neglects the asset value of the website.

A website that earns money is just like a small company. It has a value, which is proportional to the amount of money that such website is expected to earn in the coming years. The right valuation is done with a method called Discounted Cash Flow, but for the sake of simplicity you can just use a multiple combined with the monthly revenues.

Low end websites tend to sell for 12 times their monthly revenues, while premium websites sell for as much as 48 times their monthly revenues. Even if we consider the lowest multiple, therefore, the website in our previous example should be worth $12,000.

If the person decides to sell the website, after one year her total revenues would be $24,000, which is 33,33% higher than what she would have earned with a 9 to 5 job.

Whenever you consider working with blogs or websites, therefore, remember that apart from the monthly revenues, you would also be gaining asset value.

Blogging Tips : Internet Possibilities to Investigate

The Internet is changing and evolving so fast that sometimes we can’t keep up with all the useful tools and possibilities that emerge. A while ago I came across a post from Chris Brogan that talked about 57 of those possibilities that you should investigate. Here are the first 10:

1. Think about FriendFeed as your own personal newsroom or communications center.
2. Revisit Reddit as a news source, and also as a roll-your-own tool for information clustering.
3. Use Alltop as an idea-starter, or as competitive analysis of content spaces.
4. Cook up six powerful searches on Twitter Search and add those RSS outputs to your feed reader.
5. Visit Slideshare weekly and search for new presentations to learn from.
6. Use YouTube as a source for lectures and learning. Use Magnify as a curation tool.
7. Rediscover what’s interesting in Delicious/Popular. Go back and find tags that matter more to you.
8. Reconsider your current blog reading list. Do some quick math. If it is more than 60% related to your industry, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Find the outliers.
9. Pick at least one news source from outside your country to monitor information from a different perspective. One of my sources is The Guardian.
10. Subscribe to at least one blog with a strong opposing view. Learn from it. Learn where your position is different. Learn how they say what they say successfully. Discover what has impact and what doesn’t.

Through the rest of the list he talks about web-based work, video, small and local stuff, mobile applications and money. It is worth a look.

Blogging Tips : Testing Your Blog Backup

In this guest post, Neil Matthews of WPDude.com talks about the importance of testing your blog backups.

I want to pose you a question. Have you ever tested your blog backups?

We are constantly told to backup our computer systems in case of crash or corruption. Anyone who has lost a store of precious digital photos knows how important this process is.

Bloggers are well aware of the need to backup their content, but what use is a backup, if, when you need to recover it, you find that it is incomplete, corrupt or you don’t know how to restore it?. This post will hopefully encourage you to test your recovery process.

The rest of this post has a definite WordPress bias, but the underlying message can be used for all blogging platforms.
Why Test Your Backups?

You may feel that once you have setup a backup process for your blog you can sit back and enjoy a virtual safety net. If you have a good process in place why should you test it? The three reasons to test are validity, integrity and knowledge.

Validity - are you sure that all of your blog is backed up? You need to test that all of your data is being added to your archives. Blogs are not static, you may have added a plugin which creates new data, but is your archiving process configured to save this?

Integrity - are you sure that the archive file is not corrupt? It may be that in your hour of need, you cannot recover what has been backed up.

Knowledge - another reason to test your backup is to ensure you know how to perform a recovery. It is all well and good to have a plugin sending you a daily email with a database backup, but do you know how to untar the file and load this into MYSQL? Testing your backup will show you the gaps in your knowledge. This will give you the chance to gain the skills so you can recover from a blog failure.
What To Recover

Your must be able to recover two things to have a successful backup recovery test:

Your database contents; posts, comments, tags, catagories and misc. system settings. With WordPress this will be a MYSQL database. The second thing that will require recovery is your code base or the WordPress files you uploaded to your hosting platform. You may think that having a copy of your latest wordpress files held on your laptop are enough to recover your blog’s code base. Whilst this is a good starting point, you are ignoring the non-static area of the code base, the wp-content directory. This contains your plugins, themes and any media you upload to your blog such as images or video. Do you remember what plugins you installed or what changes you have made to your theme. You need to backup and, in turn, test the recovery of your code base.
When To Test Your Recovery Plan

As a rule of thumb, you should test your ability to recover before any major change to your blog, including:

* Before WordPress updates
* After you have developed some high quality content which is generating
* traffic and will cause tears if lost
* Importing or Migrating a large amount of data
* Extending your blog with third party products such as forums
* At least once a year if any of the above do not occur so you know your
* backups are working correctly

How to Test Your Backups

There are two ways to test your backup, the easy but highly risky method, and the difficult but risk free method (who said blog maintenance wasn’t high tension stuff).

The easy but risky method - restore your backup over your existing blog, this is easy because no additional configuration is required and you backup should simply drop into your database/file system. This is highly risky of course due to the nature of the the process, you don’t know if you backup works, but how do you test it? If your backup does not work the restore will bring you perfectly running blog to it’s knees. Another classic chicken and egg scenario.

The difficult but risk free method - build a development blog on your existing hosting platform and restore into this . This will vary from hosting provider to hosting provider, and will require a certain amount of technical knowledge (which is beyond the scope of this post). You can create a new domain, a second installation of wordpress in another directory on your existing domain or even build a blog on your own PC with apache, MYSQL and PHP. It is difficult because it requires a certain level of technical expertise, but it is risk free to your current blog because you never touch it.
In Conclusion

Test your backups frequently so you know what shape your archives are in. As a parting note picture this scene. Your blog and possibly your income steam is down. The faster your recover the sooner you will be blogging and earning again, test your backups!

Blogging Tips : Social Media Marketing FAQ

My friend Steven Snell just wrote a really comprehensive FAQ on the social media marketing topic. I am sure you hear that term frequently online, but do you really know what it means and what activities it encompasses?

Here are the first two questions:

What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

SMM involves promoting content in various ways to social media users, in attempt to increase traffic and exposure. SMM can involve developing content that targets social media users, building a network of other users, requesting votes from others, and anything else that involves getting votes and traffic from social media websites.

What is the difference between SMM and Social Media Optimization?

The term Social Media Optimization usually doesn’t include the act of promoting content through such methods as requesting votes. SMO involves creating the right content and setting a website up to be friendly to social media users, but doesn’t go as far in terms of promoting the content.

Blogging Tips : Use Niche Social Networking Sites to Gain Readers

Many bloggers attempt to use social networking sites to gain new readers for their blog. In this post Kevin Palmer of Social Media Answers shares some tips on how to do it.

One of the most undervalued places to find readers is a niche social networking site. Right now there are niche sites for just about every subject imaginable. Would you like to share your love of old cars? Not a problem. Want to connect to other mothers? There are tons of sites. Do you want to reach out to other people that pose as vampires? Believe it or not there is a site for you.

Here are some of the benefits of joining a niche social network:

You know other members share the same interests.

Instead of having to hunt through groups on larger sites or looking for people through keywords in their “about me” section you know right off the bat you share the same interests. Just by participating on the social network you are going to be connecting with people that may be interested in reading your blog. It is a targeted and focused environment for you.

Tip: Try spending 10-15 minutes a day just adding friends and interacting. Not only will people find your blog but also you will discover loads of others.

Smaller community but a larger voice.

Sure the pool is smaller compared to larger sites but you can be a big fish in a small pond quickly. You can quickly obtain an authoritative voice in a niche social network by listening, participating, and sharing.

Tip: Participate in forums or large groups to establish your voice and become a go to source of information. Sharing your knowledge and helping others out has lasting benefits.

Most of these sites link to your blog, pass on page rank, and bring a flow of traffic just from filling out your profile.

I have registered on over 700 social networking sites in the past few months and I was shocked to see the sheer number that pass on page rank when I link to my blog within my profile. Additionally by just setting up profiles and including my blog information I was getting a steady flow of traffic to my site even though I hadn’t “officially” launched yet.

Tip: Take time to actually fill out your profile. Have a document that already has your about me, favorites, and other typical topics you find on social networking sites ready to go so you can cut and paste your info from it.

Additional features like social news voting and forums are a great way to gain readers.

I found multiple sites ranging from sports to art that had their own social news section that was active. In testing a few of these out for a client I realized that the conversion from visitor to subscriber was high. Compared to traditional social news sites where it is very low.

Tip: The traffic from here can also lead to voting on traditional social news sites as well. Use these features to drive people to posts you really want to push on Digg, Reddit, or other sites. Make sure you embed buttons on the post to give them a cue.

Now don’t just run out there and register for every niche that might apply to your blog. There are a couple of things to watch out for:

• Is the network active? Make sure you check out the forums or any place that shares content from other users that has a date. Check to see if there is a constant and recent flow, it is a good measuring stick to show you how active the site is.
• What is the target country for the site? - If your site has a regional appeal you may want to check to see where the site is based out of and where the users are from.

I highly recommend picking out a site or two and experiment with it. Investing a little amount of time per day or even week can go a long way on these sites. On my blog I have a pretty comprehensive list of niche social networking sites, which is always evolving and growing, hope this helps as a starting out point.