Whether it’s not being able to come up with a topic or whether it strikes midway through a post in which you just can’t seem to find a way to express yourself – bloggers block sucks.

So how do you over come it?

I once wrote a series of tips on the topic of battling bloggers block – but I’m interested to hear your own techniques for getting through these tough patches on a blog – what advice would you give a blogger struggling with it?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How Do You Overcome Bloggers Block?

Share This

Over in the ProBlogger.com forum there’s been a lot of talk about different tools, applications, platforms and plugins that helps to improve blogs. I’m loving the different opinions and experiences and thought it’d be a good question to open up to the wider community – what are your favourite 10 blogging tools?

I suspect most of us will probably include our blogging platform (Blogspot, WordPress, TypePad etc) in the list somewhere but other than that anything goes. Perhaps it’s a comments tool, perhaps a desktop editor, perhaps a plugin or widget – anything goes!

But limit it to 10!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What are Your Favorite 10 Blogging Tools?

Share This

But is this just a few bloggers who’ve avoided a downturn in their earnings (and seen them rise) or is this more common?

I’d be interested to hear your experience. Is blogging income up? Down? About the Same?

If there’s been a change what’s been behind it? Is it a decrease in advertising CPM, a change in traffic levels or more to do with your own change in focus?

My Situation:

Back in March I wrote a post on how the economy had been impacting my blogging. Things are similar now – I’d summarise my own earnings as:

• Overall they’re up (around 15% on last year)
• Ad Revenue has been a little down on the last few months when it comes to private Ad Sales
• Ad network revenue has been up quite a bit (I’m filling in a few of the private ad spots with them but also seeing more advertisers targetting my photography blog via AdSense)
• Affiliate revenue has continued to grow (partly because I’ve had an increase in traffic and partly because I’ve focused more upon affiliate marketing)
• Diversifying by releasing the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook certainly was helpful in making up for some of the private advertising revenue lost

In short – things have risen. I think because I’d been expecting the worst I decided to do some diversification. This has led to an overall increase – mainly because the decreases were not as bad as I’d expected and the diversifications paid off. In a strange way the economic downturn has actually been beneficial to me as it forced me into this diversification and new income streams.

How’s it been for you?

PS: Check out this post I wrote late in 2008 called – 13 Tips to Recession Proof Your Blog.

I guess I took my own advice in many of the points (particularly with points #7 and #9) and it paid off. I still think point #1 is key – keep building your blog, keep increasing the quality of it’s content and you’ll position yourself well for when things do bounce back.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Has the Economy Impacted Your Earnings?

Share This

As I mentioned in the introduction to that post – Kevin had really described much of my own motivations for starting my photography blog (and that of many many other successful blogs). While I did see an opportunity for profit in that blog when I started it – my main motivation for kicking it off was to share what I was learning about photography and to see if I could draw others with a similar interest together to learn from one another.

For me I always wanted to see if I could make some money from that blog – but early on it wasn’t the biggest motivation. Over the years as the blog has grown and become more profitable I suspect my motivations have changed a little – I’m still interested in the topic – but it’s certainly more of a focus to make it profitable.

Of course starting a blog on a topic you’re interested in or passionate about is not the only way – many successful bloggers have started blogs with other motivations – including to make money, to grow their profile, to drive traffic to their business etc…. (or some combination of motivations).

Why Did You Start Blogging?

Yesterdays post has got me thinking – why DO people start blogs? Has the motivation changed from a few years back when blogs first began to get popular (when I started 7 years ago most people seemed to be doing it purely for fun and to make connections)?

I’d be interested to hear about your initial motivations to starting a blog? Did you start on a topic you were interested in? Did you start with the idea of making money? Was there some other motivation/s? Also – have your motivations changed since starting your blog?

Interested to hear your thoughts!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Why Did You Start Blogging?

Share This

I’ve identified 7 principles of compelling content that I’ll be sharing (actually it could blow out to 9 as the more I think about it the more I realize there’s to say on the topic) but before I do I wanted to open up the opportunity for people to share their thoughts – undistracted from what I’ll share.

My hope is that in answering this question we’ll begin to set the scene for the posts that will come and that the series that follows will be more useful to everyone. I’d also like to use a few quotes from what you share in some of my following posts so please make sure you include your name and URL in the appropriate areas in the comments below.

So What Makes Content Compelling to You?

Looking forward to reading your thoughts on this question and sharing some of mine in the coming week. Make sure you’re subscribed to ProBlogger to be notified of the posts to come in this series.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What is Compelling Content to You?

Share This

Everyone answered in their own way but she managed to make some sense of it and came up with the following categories of what people do with their blogs on the weekend.

The numbers signify how many people said that they did that strategy and they are ranked from most common responses to least common:

• I write extra posts for the week ahead, work on planning and goals, or do other marketing work for my blog – 54
• I take a couple of days off (or most of my weekend days) for family and fun or other household chores – 20
• I write/post 6 or 7 days a week no matter what – 20
• I write “lighter” posts like link lists or reviews – 18
• I post less because people are not online as much – 15
• I work another full time job during the week and use weekends for catching up on my blogging – 14
• No strategy, or I post whenever I have time or an idea, even if that means weekends – 11
• I post more to try to keep traffic levels up – 9

So there you have it – most people seem to publish posts that they’ve pre-written.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What You Do With Your Blogs Over the Weekend [RESULTS]

Share This

What is your weekend blogging strategy?

• Do you post less because people are not online as much?
• Do you post more to try to keep traffic levels up?
• Do you just take a couple of days off and just take a break?
• Do you write posts in advance and schedule them to go off automatically?
• Do you use the weekend to write posts for the next week because you’ve got extra time on my hands?

Interested to hear your strategy.

PS: I’ve written a little more about what I do on the weekends here and here.

PS2: the weekend’s the perfect time to kick start your blog. Why not start the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What is your Weekend Blogging Strategy?

Share This

The response was fantastic. I actually found quite a bit of inspiration in some of the comments left and think that there were some great ideas and lessons shared. I think that by sharing the things that have gone well as well as the ‘worst’ stuff (mistakes, problems etc) that we can all learn a lot.

So…. I’ve decided to make this a weekly post that I think I’ll run on Saturday my time (Friday for those of you in the US).

My Best and Worst

Worst – This week was a tough one at home. The whole family (including me) has been sick at different times. On top of that I’ve had a few extra things to do outside of blogging (for example this weekend I’m preaching at church – something that takes a lot of preparation). As a result my main struggle this week has been around finding the time and head space to blog. I think I managed to get through it but did have to lessen my load a little by pulling back on some of my normal social media activities like Twitter.

Best – While I struggled to keep putting out new content this week one of the best things about the week was that some of what I did manage to write seemed to resonate with readers. A couple of posts (this one on declining traffic and this one on my ’sock drawer’)got over 100 comments which is always a level that I look to on this blog to signal a post did well and for some reason this was one of those weeks when the positive feedback emails outweighed the complaints (always a nice thing).

What was your best and worst of the week? Share anything you like as long as it relates to your experience of blogging!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Best and Worst Blogging Experiences of the Week

Share This

Image by hebedesign

I was reading the blog of fellow Aussie blogger Mia Freedman this week and saw her weekly post ‘Best and Worst of the week‘ in which she asks her readers to share the best and worst things that happened to them during the week (as well as sharing hers).

I thought it was a cool idea and thought I’d give it a go here at ProBlogger – but with one difference. While Mia’s readers write their best and worst things from all areas of their lives I thought it’d be more helpful to everyone if we kept it to the topic of the best and worst things that happened to us as they relate to our online activities/blogging/social media.

I’ll share mine below and look forward to reading yours. Hopefully though this we’ll all learn a thing or two from one another about what works and what doesn’t work in building blogs.

So tell us your best and worst. I’m particularly interested in hearing what you learned through the best and worst of your week.

My Best – Forum Traffic

the best thing to happen to me this week was some big days of traffic on my photography site, particularly the photography forum area of it. Friday in particular was a great day with visitor numbers 3-4 times normal levels. The reason? Actually there were a few:

1. Friday is newsletter day – Friday is normally a good day (usually about double the traffic of other days) because it is the day I send out my weekly email newsletters to readers. The newsletter not only contains the latest posts from the blog section of the site but also hot threads in the forum. But that was only part of it….

2. Twitter – this past week I decided to expand what I was doing with the DPS Twitter account and not only promote new posts on the blog but highlight key threads in the forum. The result has been really promising with a definite bump in traffic from it (I’d say it’s accounted for an extra 10-20% in traffic depending on the day).

3. SEO – just over a week ago I installed VBSEO – a plugin for VBulletin (the platform I run the forum on) that optimizes the forum for search engines. By default and out of the box VBulletin is pretty horrible for SEO so this plugin is one I’ve wanted to install for a while. The results were very quick – within 3 days we’d seen search traffic up by between 25-40% (it varied a little from day to day).

What I learned? I guess there were a few fairly obvious lessons. Twitter and newsletters can be great for driving traffic, VB sucks for SEO by default etc.

The other thing that I relearned is about forums – while the DPS forum gets a lot less visits per day it drives a lot more page views per visit. For example in June the forum area of the site had only an eighth of the visitor numbers that the blog area had – but had about 60% of the page views. ie: Driving one person to visit a blog does not equal the same as driving one person to visit a forum.

My Worst – Comment Spam

This goes back beyond the last week but as a result in an incredible rise in comment spam I’ve switched comments off here at ProBlogger on any post older than 90 days old. I know this inconveniences some but it was the result of massive increase in comment spam getting through the filters/plugins that I was using. The filters were catching many thousands a day but hundreds and hundreds were getting though and it was taking quite a few hours a week to go through them all manually.

As most of these comments were hitting old posts and because 99% of the genuine comments here on ProBlogger were on new posts I took the decision to switch off comments on old posts. I’m hoping that this is a temporary measure and have the tech team at b5media working on some solutions.

So there you have it – my best and worst of the week.

What Were the Best and Worst Blogging Experiences You Had This Week?

What have been the best and worst things that have happened on your blogs or online experience in the past week? What have you learned? What will you do again? What will you do differently?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Were the Best and Worst Blogging Experiences You Had This Week?

Share This

n

If you’ve got more than one blog – choose the one you consider to be your main blog. Tell us more in comments below!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Who Designed Your Blog?

Share This

77% have never done one and a further 7% don’t currently do one which leaves 16% who either do them regularly or occasionally.

What interests me most about these results is the change in them from last time we asked the question back in 2007.

In that poll we only gave the option for a ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answer but there has been a swing away from paid posts in that time. The shift has not been massive but is noticeable. Here’s how it went last time.

Perhaps this reflects a change in the audience here at ProBlogger but I suspect it also shows a change in bloggers attitudes to paid posts also.

Back in 2007 they were a much hotter topic (there was a heap of debate on the topic) and many bloggers were keen to experiment with paid posts as a potential income stream.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

23% of ProBlogger Readers Have Written Paid Posts [POLL RESULTS]

Share This

Once you’ve voted – here’s a few posts on the topic for those wanting to explore it more.

• 5 Lessons on Making Money with Affiliates Programs
• 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Marketing on Blogs
• 6 More Tips for Affiliate Marketing on Blogs
• Affiliate Marketing Tips for Twitter Users
• 9 Reasons Why I am an Amazon Affiliate
• How to Choose Affiliate Programs for Your Blog

Don’t know what Affiliate Marketing is? Check out What is Affiliate Marketing.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Do You Do Affiliate Marketing on Your Blog? [POLL]

Share This

As a bonus to those who buy the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook I’m going to record a podcast later this week that tackles as many blogging related questions as possible.

The recording will be made available as a thank you/bonus to anyone who has previously bought the workbook or who buys it in future. Get Your Own Copy Here if you’d like to get access.

If you’d like to ask me a question – feel free to either email it via the contact form here at ProBlogger or leave it in comments below. If you use the contact form make your first line of the email include ‘question for 31DBBB podcast’ so I know what it is for. I’ll credit people with their questions unless it specifically says to keep them anonymous.

Questions can be related to 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project, any of the daily tasks in it, or any other blogging related question. I’m not sure how many questions I’ll get but I’ll attempt to answer as many as I can during the recording.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Ask Me a Blogging Related Question [Bonus for Workbook Buyers]

Share This

The results were clear with 43% of ProBlogger readers using WordPress.org, 29% using Blogger and 13% using WordPress.com.

This isn’t the first time I’ve run this survey. The first time I ran it was in January of 2006 – since then I ran it again in November 2007. Here are those results:

The top two platforms still remain #1 and #2 although WordPress.org has taken pushed out their lead but from there on in there’s been a shift with MovableType taking a step back and WordPress.come surging. Also interesting to me is the ‘Other’ category. When we ran this survey in 2006 there were many more platforms mentioned.

Keep in mind that this is just a survey of ProBlogger readers. While we have some diversity in our community we’re just a subset of the wider blogosphere and I’m not sure that these stats are representative of all bloggers.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Blogging Platforms Do We Use? [POLL RESULTS]

Share This

The majority like ‘Light’ backgrounds but a fair chunk of readers think it depends upon the blog design.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Light or Dark Blog Backgrounds? [POLL RESULTS]

Share This

If you have more than one blog and more than one platform running them choose your most used platform.

Looking forward to seeing what your responses are.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Blog Platform Do You Use Most?

Share This

Feel free to share your reasons for your answer in comments below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Do you prefer Light or Dark Backgrounds on Blogs?

Share This

• Should a blog have full feeds or partial feeds?
• Is a blog a blog if it doesn’t have comments?
• Frequency of Posting – Should a blog post once a week, once a day or 20 times a day?
• Should you self host your blog or use a free blogging platform?

There are many questions and issues that bloggers tend to debate when it comes to blogging and each time I ask one of these questions as a reader question it is amazing to see the diversity of opinions that bloggers have and decisions that they’ve made about how to run their blogs.

Here are some of the topics I’ve seen debated regularly over the years:

• RSS Feeds - Full vs Partial Feeds
• Comment Sections – Comments vs No Comments
• Post Frequency – Post More vs Post Less
• Domain Names – long vs short, hyphens vs non hypens, .com vs other extensions (like .net, .org), local vs global domain extensions
• Hosting – hosted vs self hosted
• Titles – descriptive vs keywords
• Content – Link content vs Original content
• Design – Professional Design vs Templates
• Ownership – Use Social Media vs Build Your own properties
• Topic – Niche vs Broad Topics
• Dating Posts – Dates on Posts vs Non Dated
• Anonymous blogging vs Using Your Name
• SEO – Writing for Search Engines vs Writing for Humans
• Personal Blogging – Sticking to Topic vs Injecting Personality and Personal details

I’m sure if we were to go through each topic in turn (and I intend to tackle each going forward into the next month) that there’d be a little heat in some of the discussions because many of them are things that bloggers have quite strongly held opinions on.

However – the reality is that there are many ways to build a successful blog and in almost every debate that bloggers have there are bloggers who manage to take almost diametrically opposed approaches to blogging yet who build successful blogs.

For me it comes down to being willing to enter into building blogs that are shaped more by the topic you’re writing about, the audience you’re attempting to reach and in a way that fits with your style, personality and situation. Out of all that will emerge a way of blogging that is unique.

What other blog debates do you see happening?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Blogging Debates – There are Many Ways to Build a Successful Blog

Share This

Which do you value and prefer most – Blog Readers or Twitter followers? And why?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Would you Prefer More Blog Readers or Twitter Followers?

Share This

Last night I published a post on DPS that gave a few results from the survey (mainly the demographical information). As I was about to hit publish on the post something hit me that I’d not realized at any point over the last two years of developing the site:

“the audience of DPS is…. well remarkably like…. me”

On each section of the survey that asked about people’s demographics or photography habits the most common response was the response I would have given if I’d completed the survey.

Of course there were a lot of people who answered differently – but if I had to describe my readers they’d be people a lot like me.

I’m still processing what this means (if anything) – Neil in the comments on that post suggested that it’s like pet owners and their pets looking like each other – perhaps that’s true.

Perhaps it is also a bit of a learning lesson – develop a blog for yourself, or people like you.

• meet your own needs (or needs you’ve had)
• write about things that interest you
• write about questions that you’ve asked
• share experiences you’ve had and lessons you’ve learned

Do these kinds of things and you’ll attract people in a similar situation.

I’m going to ponder that some more – but in the mean time I’m interested to hear what other peoples experiences are – have you attracted readers to your blog that are ‘like you’?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Do You Attract Readers to Your Blog that Are Like You?

Share This