Written on September 3rd, 2010 at 12:09 am by Darren Rowse
How to Get Hired on the Problogger Job Board
Guest Post by Ross Hudgens of Billy.com.
Making money as a freelance content writer isn’t easy. If you aren’t running your own blog or website, turning content into cash can be a difficult thing. But there’s opportunity out there – you just have to try a little harder than normal to find it.
One of the best places to look is the Problogger job board. Here, potential employers are looking for people like you – writers serious about their craft, with a strong content-creation skillset that often develops from reading a website like this.
Because of these potential employer’s high standards for Problogger readers, this won’t be the kind of cheap, outsourced content creation you’ll have to scrap up pennies and quarters from – it’ll be real, well-paid writing gigs with some of the best and biggest websites and content hubs on the internet.
Of course, with better gigs come higher standards – so you, as a potential applicant, need to spice up your resume and take note of the intimate details that’ll make your application pop.
How I Found a Content Writer on Problogger
My friend at another company recently created a posting for a content writer on Problogger and told me about his success. As a Marketing Manager at a new company with many quality content development needs, I decided to create a posting as well.
Overall, I was rather impressed with the quality of applicant, but what also shocked me were the glaring problems with many of the resumes and cover letters in my inbox. Similarly, I was equally impressed with some of the ways the better applications “stood out” in ways I wouldn’t have previously thought of.
Both of these revelations made me realize the necessity for this post – since I know the plight of a job seeker who often wonders – “Why wasn’t I picked?”—I thought I could help improve your application process in some way, and also, the chances you get picked up as a content writer on your next application go-round.
Common Application Mistakes Writers Make
1. They had zero attention to detail. One of the classic ways to weed out auto-applicants is by using a “use this” subject line. For example, specifically requesting that the applicant include the job description as the subject. Amazingly, by including this simple detail in my job description, I automatically weeded out 15% of the applicants. Similarly, other applications would announce they were using a templated cover letter due to the appearance of two different fonts, or that they had found my application on Craigslist.
C’mon, really?
How can I possibly rely on you to complete a content piece with exact specifications if you can’t do it for a simple, straightforward application?
2. Their application was too bland. Yes, employers are hiring you on your content writing skills, but when I get 200 applications in my inbox for a position that isn’t full-time, it would be an immense waste of effort to scroll through 600 content pieces to find the best writer. I, like most employers, have a sifting process that involves automatically disregarding many of these applications.
If your cover letter was too brief or non-personal, this implies a disinterest in the job. Although you might have been aware of enough to post the “use this” subject line, you were also not with it enough to customize your application to look anything different than 5 million other similar ones that have made their way into employer’s inboxes.
3. Their content samples were not specific to the application. Although you may be a great writer, I would need to be extremely impressed with your prior history to choose you if you had not written about the subject I was asking for. Again, by disregarding many of these applications that don’t have a specificity, potential employers save a lot of the hassle, and to be blunt, being a “great writer” does not mean that you are cut out to write about green technology, fashion, or marine biology. Sorry.
When businesses come to Problogger looking to hire, it’s not because they want to find a generic person who can pump out articles about anything – they want expertise in an area. The cheap, bland kind of content creation can be found elsewhere.
If you’re really interested in a position that creates content green technology, write a sample article about it for submission. That’s the only way you’re going to get hired unless you’ve got a stacked history of creating viral, amazing content.
4. They only linked to their own blog. You might be able to write well about stuff you care about, but are you skilled enough to think outside the box and also meet the specifications of a certain job description? By linking to just your blog, you’re telling me you don’t have experience writing according to other’s specifications. It’s great that you’re a good writer, but there’s more to the job description than that. Ability to follow directions, attention to detail, and domain expertise are all things that can put an average writer far above a good one.
5. They lacked effort. Some people just flat out didn’t try, asking for payment information, more job details and etc. before supplying additional details. Don’t waste your time making these kinds of pitches! Employers have to pay $50 to get on the job board, and they do it for a reason – there is a wealth of quality potential writers that read the site. By making this kind of inquiry, you are not only wasting the employer’s time, you are wasting your own.
In this way, applications work like the below graph. At a certain effort level, the chances of being hired are rather low, not because you’re a bad writer – but because everyone makes that level of effort. Once you’ve hit an imaginary line – somewhere between 10-20 minutes of effort when applying, your chances jump dramatically. Before that, every second added does little to improve your chances.
How to Make Your Application Stand Out
Beyond the failures in the application process, there are also plenty of application “pluses” I stumbled into that made me stop and say “let’s talk”. Getting an interview among 200 applicants is more than just not being bad – it’s about being really, really good too.
1. Create a Customized, PDFed Resume. As a freelance writer, there’s a good chance you’re going to be applying for lots of these positions. As such, if applying is something you’re constantly doing, you should take steps towards investing in this process – and that means creating an amazing, aesthetically pleasing resume. One applicant sent me a PDF with their work history, a professional photo, and content examples, all in one aesthetically pleasing package. I was immensely impressed with the time and effort they put into this package, even if it wasn’t customized directly for me. Showing an immaculate standard for quality and great presentation is something I want to see reflected in writing, too.
2. Be Creative with the Cover Letter. You’re a content writer, right? This shouldn’t be too difficult. If your opening line says “I saw your BLAND JOB position at BUSINESS posted at X and I was extremely impressed”, you’re telling me that yes, you do care enough to change those custom fields in your template, but you’re also telling me that no, you don’t care enough to try any harder.
If you know the company, find some interesting detail about it and open with it. If you’re lucky enough to know the name of the person you’re applying to, you can go even further to pique their interest. Not only will you likely stroke the ego, you’ll also show you possess the creativity and wherewithal to create quality content.
3. Have content specific to the application. This is straightforward, but the more focused the content is on what the job description asks for, the more likely you are to be seriously considered. The better this content is, the more likely you are to get picked up.
4. Tagging your application e-mail as “High Importance”. This is a minor detail but I found myself opening these e-mails first, and any time you get seen first in a batch of 200 e-mails, that’s a good thing. This function doesn’t work in Gmail, but there’s a good chance you’re sending your application to a business address – so there’s a high probability they’re using Outlook.
5. Be a great writer – everywhere. Again, a rather straightforward thing, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night not mentioning it. Every piece of text in a content writer’s application is important, so make sure every bit of it is a direct reflection of your ability to create great content.
If you can’t properly format paragraphs in the cover letter, you’re not getting hired. If your punctuation is shoddy, you’re not getting hired. If your presentation is subpar, you’re not getting hired. You’re a great writer – why not be one all the time?
Get Applying!
Now that you know how to get hired, get to the job board, check out those job descriptions and start applying! If you have any other stories, tips, or suggestions on how to get hired as a content writer, please share them in the comments!
Ross Hudgens is a Marketing Manager at Billy.com. He also blogs over at his personal website, Authentic Marketing. You should follow him on Twitter here.
Written on September 2nd, 2010 at 10:09 am by Darren Rowse
ProBlogger Track Details – Blog World Expo
Blog World and New Media Expo is a fantastic event for bloggers held every October in Las Vegas.
This year there will be a full day of ProBlogger training in a ‘ProBlogger Track’ on the Thursday. Yesterday the full details of that track’s sessions were released on the BWE site.
The four sessions through the day are based around 4 Pillars of ProBlogging that Chris Garret and I have been working on for a future resource here at ProBlogger. In our view these 4 pillars are all crucial foundations in building profitable blogs – it’s not just about one or two of them, all come together and make a blog a more powerful thing.
The day in vegas is also very similar in content to what we recently put on in the sold out ProBlogger Training day here in Melbourne.
Here are the four pillars and session times:
Creating Killer Content: 9.45-1045am (Presented by Chris Garrett)
Chris Garrett walks attendees through principles of creating compelling content that will draw readers into a blog and get them excited about passing it onto their network./b>
Finding Readers for Your Blog: 11am-12pm (Presented by Darren Rowse)
What’s the point of great content if nobody is reading it? Darren Rowse has jam packed his session full of teaching and tips on ensuring that your blog is read… by more than your Mom!
Building Community On Your Blog: 1.30-2.30pm (Presented by Darren Rowse)
A blog REALLY comes alive when it has community. In this session Darren Rowse teaches the secrets of moving ‘visitors’ into ‘readers’ and ‘readers’ into ‘members’ who feel a sense of belonging to your blog and who begin to take ownership of it to help you take it to the next level.
Making Money from Your Blog: 2.45-3.45pm (Presented by Darren, Chris and Yaro Starak)
In this final session of the ProBlogger stream Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak and Chris Garrett will present strategies for making blogs profitable through a variety of approaches. It will include time for Q&A from participants.
If you’re interested in these sessions – make sure you mark them on your schedule so you don’t forget they’re on. I’m sure Chris and I can come up with some prizes for people who come along and participate well so we’ll make it a fun day.
Keep in mind that this ProBlogger track is on the Thursday and is available to all BWE attendees with a ticket for that day. There will be other sessions going on in other rooms that you can also attend (although we’ve designed this track so that it’s best if you get the full lot).
Other Sessions
I’ll also be participating in a number of other panels and sessions including:
- A Keynote with Brian Clark and Sonia Simone (both of Copyblogger and ThirdTribe)
- A Monetization panel with Shoemoney, John Chow and Anita Campbell
- Possibly a couple of other sessions – TBC
Come along to BWE
I get excited about Blog World Expo every year. The sessions/teaching are great (I just looked over the schedule and there’s some great stuff going on) but better still is the opportunity to meet other bloggers (big and small). The opportunities for collaboration, networking and some fun times are certainly there.
This was taken at a ProBlogger dinner we held last year at BWE – one of the most fun nights I had all year. Photo by Lisa Morosky.
I’ve found people to be very approachable and while there are thousands of others there it’s not as overwhelming as some of the bigger conferences like SXSW.
Speakers are very accessible – here’s Tim Ferris (4 hour work week), Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) and I after one of the sessions in 2008. Image by Shashi Bellamkonda.
I also love how BWE brings together such a diverse group of people from all kinds of interesting backgrounds.
One of my more surreal moments last year was sharing the stage with people like CNN’s Don Lemon, music producer/rapper Jermaine Dupri, journalist Hugh Hewitt, and Ford’s Scott Monty. Image by Ken Yeung.
Lastly – if you book your tickets before 16 September there are some good discounts on tickets still available. Get all the details on the Blog World and New Media Expo Site and I hope to see you in Vegas!
Written on September 2nd, 2010 at 01:09 am by Georgina Laidlaw
How to Outsource Your Blog… Or Part of It
You don’t need to be a big-time blogger to need to outsource some aspect of your blog. A beginning blogger with a serious business plan might want to contract a designer to create a skin for their blog. A entrepreneurial blogger might want to outsource some writing, or have an agency provide social media strategy for the blog.
There are plenty of reasons why you might outsource some aspect of your blogging. But once you’ve identified the need, how should you proceed?
Don’t make your first step trying to find good candidates! Before you go hunting for help, you need to do your homework. Here’s the process I’d recommend.
1. Define what you want.
“I need help with my blog content” is not a clear directive. If you’re going to source help, you need to know what to look for, which means you need to have a clear idea of what, specifically, you want.
Don’t just think in terms of contractor skillsets. Think in terms of your audience. So you want to have a new interface designed for your blog. Great. But what do you want it to do? Do you have a visual identity you want the design to reflect or match? Are there interactive elements — like social media buttons or a subscription box — that, in accordance with your readership objectives, you want to prioritise in your design? Do you have user and usage stats that can help to drive the technical specifications you provide to a designer?
Work out what you think you want, and why, before you start thinking about who might do the work.
2. Make it measurable.
The word ‘measurable’ really gives the game away — if the first step in this process was to define specific objectives, the next one is to make them measurable.
Some tasks are difficult to measure — the “success” of a new homepage design might seem like one of them. But look a little closer and, whatever the task you’re setting, you’ll likely find ways to assess the results. Perhaps you’ll assess your current traffic metrics and set new goals that you expect the new site design to help meet. Perhaps you’ll require the designer to show you the results of usability testing.
Alternatively, your goals might be internal — related to your time or operations. Maybe you want to save time — say, two days a week — by outsourcing some of your blog post research and writing tasks. Fine. But make sure you’re prepared to track the time you spend managing your contractor, to make sure that you haven’t simply replaced two days’ writing with two days’ contractor management!
As part of setting measurable goals, don’t forget to apply a timeline to each! This is the most basic way for you to assess whether your outsourced work is on track.
3. Set a budget.
Now that you have an idea of what you want, and what benefits you need it to bring, you should be able to translate those benefits into a dollar value, and decide on the investment you’re willing to make to achieve that goal.
You might want the new design for your blog to increase average per-session pageviews by 1.5 within the first three months. Great! What will that do for your advertising revenues in that time? And how much can you afford to invest to generate this return?
Setting a budget is an essential step in the process. This will help you to qualify candidates early in the process, and save you from spending time talking to “prospective” contractors who really aren’t in your market at all.
4. Seek recommendations.
Unless you have experience in a given market space or discipline and believe you have the skills to select good talent off the bat, you might consider asking peers and colleagues for talent recommendations. Whether you’re outsourcing blog content production or your accounting tasks, personal recommendations are the best way to have some assurance that you’ll get what you expect.
Alternatively — or additionally — you might call for expressions of interest through your blog, your social networks, your professional networks, and other likely sources. To me, these approaches are still better options than advertising blindly on freelance networks, or scouring the web in an effort to find that needle in a haystack — good help that you can afford and trust. Recommendations are best.
5. Research the provider.
However you obtain recommendations, research the provider before you contact them. Conducting your own research is important — you never know what information a quick web search will turn up. Hopefully it’s the same information the contractor in question will provide to you, but if it’s not the kind of detail they’d likely share, you’ll be glad you looked into their work yourself.
If the contractor is local, your peers or colleagues may know them, so again: ask around. Encourage people to be candid and to give you their honest opinions, but also be sure to find out the bases for those assessments. Try to remain as open-minded and objective as possible at this point, so you can create a shortlist of at least two — but hopefully three or four — providers you believe might suit the job.
6. Make contact.
Make careful observation of each shortlisted candidate from the moment of your first contact. Everything they do and say will provide clues as to how well you may be able to work with them. If something makes you uncomfortable, try to work out what it is and why it’s a problem.
Again, it’s important to try to remain reasonable and objective at this point. The fact that your potential designer is wearing a suit and tie doesn’t mean he’s not as creative as the previous candidate, who rolled up to the meeting in ripped jeans and cool runners.
Try to get all the information from the candidate that you’ll need to make your outsourcing decision. The things I want to have in hand when it comes time to assess my options include:
- contact details
- competent past work examples
- a pitch, brief, or written document that explains what they’ll provide, for what value, and shows that they understand and agree to my expectations, goals, and time and budget constraints
- great references from current clients
- personal experience with the candidate (it doesn’t matter whether I’ve met them to discuss the job over coffee, or over Skype: I want to meet them one way or another!).
Now, the hiring decision is all yours. To make sure you’re protected, though, you might want to ensure:
- you both sign a legally binding written contract that explains the work and the work arrangements
- your contractor has any insurances you feel are necessary
- you’ve discussed and agreed upon any copyright and intellectual property considerations
- you’ve had the contractor sign a non-disclosure and/or anti-competition agreement if you feel that’s necessary.
These steps aren’t substitutes for good research and gut instinct, but they may help you if your research and instinct don’t pay off for some reason.
Have you outsourced any aspects of your blog? How did the process work for you?
About the Author: Georgina has more than ten years’ experience writing and editing for web, print and voice. She now blogs for WebWorkerDaily and SitePoint, and consults on content to a range of other clients.
Written on September 1st, 2010 at 01:09 am by Darren Rowse
How I Generated Over 6000 Ideas to Write About on My Blog in 15 Minutes
Ever run out of things to write about on your blog?
In this video screencast I want to show you how I came up with over 6000 ideas to write about on my blog using two tools – an Auto Responder (I use Aweber (aff)) and a Simple Survey.
Setting this up took me all of 15 minutes work – after that it’s just been a matter of sitting back and watching the ideas roll in.
You may not be able to generate 6000 ideas (and the reality is that I can’t use that many) but this technique can be used on even a smallish blog.
Video Notes
- Watch the full sized version (which may help with picking up all the detail in the video) at Become a Playful Blogger
- Video shot on a Panasonic Lumix DMC GF1 (aff) – here’s why I use that camera to shoot my videos.
How to Generate Ideas to Write About on Your Blog – Transcript
I’ve had this video transcribed below for those who prefer to get it that way. The transcription provided by The Transcription People.
Today I want to show you a technique that I’ve been using just for the last few months, on how to come up with ideas to write about on your Blog.
A lot of blogger face this problem – after a few months of blogging you run out of all those great ideas that you had when you started your blog, and you want to come up with more.
This is a technique that will work best on a blog with lots of readers, but even just some readers that, particularly readers that are subscribing to your newsletter, it can be used quite effectively, even in small numbers over a longer period of time.
So, you can see on the screen here, I’ve opened up AWeber. AWeber’s my email newsletter tool that I’ve talked about numerous times on ProBlogger.
What I’ve opened up here is the auto responder sequence for my Digital Photography School (I have a number of them).
This is an auto-responder that I’ve set up for DPS and one of the newsletters, and you can see here that on this particular one I have seven different messages that go out once someone subscribes to my newsletter. These are automated messages that go out at pre-determined intervals. You can see here the intervals on the left, they get a Welcome to DPS message straight away on the first day they sign up. Then they get a series of informational newsletters including one promotional one. So they actually hear about he products that we have and get offered a discount, but they also get emails that are purely informational that give them quality links back into archives on the site.
Number seven here is the one I want to talk about today. “What would you like to learn about Photography Next?” is the title of it.
I’ve already opened it up here. Now, they’re getting this email, you’ll see there, it’s around four months into their sequence. So they’ve already been subscribed for a while, they’ve been getting our weekly newsletter updates, which is in addition to this auto-responder.
So they’ve got some connection with DPS, and then get this email. Basically thanks them for joining, and introduces the idea that we’re doing some planning for the site which we’re always doing, and at the time I started this auto-responder, I was actually doing a week of intensive planning, and introduces the concept we want it to be, DPS to be as helpful as possible and we’ve got a survey to help us to improve the site and to come up with topics to write about. And then it gives them a link to click. When they click on that link, they are taken to a survey.
Now, I’ve set it up in SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is a great tool, I think you get a certain amount for free. I’ve signed up for the premium edition, because I’m sending so many people to this as part of my newsletter. This is the back end of SurveyMonkey where you set up your questions, but here you can see the questions that I’m asking.
I introduced the topic again, and talk about why I’m doing the survey. Then I get them to begin to describe themselves in terms of the level of photographer that they are.
Then I ask the question, “I would like to see Tutorials on DPS on the following topics,” and get them to choose all that apply. Now, these are pre-determined topics that we do write on from time to time. The idea of this question is just to work out what the priorities of people are.
Then I ask them which topics would you like to see a more comprehensive guide to? So here what I’m asking is, I’m trying to get a feel for what people might pay for information on, because I want to develop eBooks. So here I’m doing a bit of a survey on that. One of the biggest ones was Travel Photography, so we developed an eBook on that. Then I asked them a question about the post-production tools they use, Photoshop, Paintshop, you know, LightRoom, Aperture, that type of thing.
And this is the golden question, this is the one I want to talk about today. Apart from those listed above, what topics would you like to see covered more on DPS? Feel free to be as specific as you’d like. So anything from a general topic like underwater photography to more specific – like slow-synch flash, or how to sharpen images in Photoshop.
So I’m giving them permission there to go beyond those broad categories we covered earlier in the survey, and to ask specific questions.
Now, SurveyMonkey gives you some great analytics, and so you can see here the answer to that first question, I’ve graphed people. I’ve actually got 71% of readers who say they’ve had a camera for a while, they’re fairly confident, but they want to get more advanced. And we get same sort of stats on these other ones. But what I want to go do down here below, is this last question that I’ve talked about.
You can see here, I’ve had this survey running for a couple of months now. I’ve had 6,369 people tell me what they want to get more information on. Specific questions. Now this is gold. This is really gold.
You get a download button here, and you can download it as a PDF or as an Excel, whatever you’d like.
Now, 6,000+ people have told me what they want to get information on, and they’ve given me specific questions. Now, some of these questions aren’t very helpful, some of the answers aren’t very helpful, you know, I’ve got someone here that says, “Fashion.” Well, we kind of figured that they probably would have ticked the Fashion Photography box above, but here we go, look, fixing problems like blown out skies, or wrinkle removal or skin softening. There’s three topics that I could go away and write on. Fish-eye photography, taking pics of babies and pets. You’ve got a lot of quite interesting stuff here. A lot of these questions are very specific, they’re post-type questions. Some of them people joke and they give you crappy answers and stuff that they’re just trying to be funny. But this is gold. There is 6,000 responses here.
Now DPS has a fairly large audience and so we are able to get 6,000 responses and that’s great. But even a blog that may be getting only a small number of people signing up to it’s newsletter every day, what happens is, as an auto-responder, remember, I’ve set this up as the seventh thing, so they’re getting all this quality information first, but after a few months of being subscribed, they’re actually still got questions, and they’re answering them.
We have around eight or nine hundred people sign up a day for this. So eight or nine hundred people are getting sent to this survey every day. You may have only eight or nine people getting this information every day, but you will find over time, if you have this as part of your auto-responder for a year or two, you’ll begin to build up a bank of questions that you can then draw upon later.
So if I’m ever wondering, you know, “What should I write about today on my blog?” I tell you, that file, that Excel file that I opened up before is one of the first places that I go, because it is just gold, it’s got so much great information.
Hope this has been helpful for you. It’s a technique that I’ve been using over the last few months on my blog and it’s really helped me to come up with a lot of great things to write about on my site.
End of Recording.
Written on August 31st, 2010 at 01:08 am by Darren Rowse
Tomorrow We Triple the Price on Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers
Grab a Copy Today for just $9.97
Update: we’ve just launched the new version of this resource and the price is now $29.97. Congrats if you got it at the launch price. To those who missed out – the resource is still value – you get 100 pages of teaching and resources to help you optimize your posts for readers and search engines.
Almost two weeks ago we launched the brand new ProBlogger eBook – the Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers.
Written by SEO specialist copywriter Glenn Murray it’s an eBook designed to help bloggers get their posts optimized for readers and search engines so that their posts reach their potential (you can read all about it here in more detail).
The feedback from those who have bought it has been incredibly positive with lots of great reviews hitting the web.
We are about to Triple the Price!
We launched this new eBook at the special introductory price of $9.97 and intended to put the price up to $14.97 this week. However – as often happens with launches like this – we’ve changed that plan.
The price is still going up on at midnight on 1 September (EST US time) but it is actually going up to $29.97 USD!
Yes – we’re tripling the price and we’re doing it for two reasons:
- we were told time and time again by those who have bought the eBook that $9.97 was a steal and that $14.97 was too cheap too.
- we decided to update the eBook significantly. One of the pieces of feedback that we got about version 1 was that it would be more useful with a working example that illustrated how to use the Scorecard. As a result – Glenn has spent time over the last 2 weeks adding a lot of new content to the eBook.
What’s in the Update?
The update is pretty significant – it adds a lot to the original version (it’s now over 100 pages) including:
- NEW — A 33-page worked example, where we score one of my own posts and discuss our reasoning.
- NEW — Electronic scorecard that automatically totals your score. You just select Yes or No.
- NEW — Single page printable scorecard, containing all the the recommendations, but scaled to print on a single page.
- NEW — Recommendation on using sentence case or title case for headings.
- NEW — Expanded discussion of SEO copy.
- NEW — Improved navigation, with bookmarks displaying to the left of the PDF, so no need to scroll back and forth between Recommendations and Scorecard.
Who gets the update?
In short – everyone will get the new version.
As of 1 September at midnight – anyone buying the eBook at $29.97 will get version 2 of it automatically. We’ll also be sending it to anyone who bought version 1 before that time.
So if you’ve already bought it – you’ll get an email sent to you (your paypal email address) with download details of version 2.
If you’ve not yet bought it – but want to get it before the price rises – you can buy version 1 today and you’ll also get an email with download details of version 2 when it is released.
Again – everyone will get the new version – it’s just a matter of how much you pay for it. If you buy before midnight on 1 September you’ll secure it for $9.97 – if you wait until after that time, you’ll pay $29.97. The choice is yours.
More Updates and Bonuses?
Will there be more updates? At this point Glenn and I are pretty happy with how the eBook looks and works and are not planning too many more updates to it. However we are putting together some extra bonuses and resources for those who buy it.
We’re hesitant to announce them right now as they’re partly based upon reader feedback but we already offer those who buy the Scorecard a newsletter which we’ll be using to send send some extra content/tips out with. We’re also looking at running a Q&A podcast session for those who’ve bought the eBook.
So yes – there will be a few bonuses for those who have bought the Copyrighting Scorecard for Bloggers.
Grab Your Copy Today
So if you’ve been umming and aaahing about whether to grab the Scorecard – it’s time to make a decision and lock it in at the intro price.
We’ll not be returning to the price of $9.97 again as it is only becoming more valuable as we add content to it.
Written on August 30th, 2010 at 12:08 am by Darren Rowse
Why Link Exchanges Are Like Mosquitoes
A Guest post by Akila from The Road Forks
Last week, I had a revelation when, after spending ten minutes fiddling around with a VPN in Podunkville, China, I opened my email and found four link exchange requests, including one asking to exchange links with “The Toad Forks” rather than our website, The Road Forks. As I slammed my laptop lid down, I realized that link exchanges are the mosquitoes of the blogging world.
Imagine that all of us bloggers — interesting and interested people engaged in making our blogs the Next Best Thing — sit down at a summer table with platters of thick-grilled hamburgers and corn on the cob next to an open cooler of dripping beers. The mosquitoes hover, pinching our legs and arms. We slap them away but their brothers come to replace them. They bloat with our blood, gorging and feeding on our health, and we develop unsightly rashes. That, my friends, are link exchange requests and we bloggers are helping these mosquitoes breed.
What is a link exchange request? A link exchange request is one where a site offers to link to your site in exchange for a reciprocal link. The key to this request is the requirement for a reciprocal link; in other words, if you don’t link to me, I don’t link to you.
Link exchange requests come in various forms. Some are from corporate entities seeking to promote blogs or sites by selling text links, though Google slashed PageRanks in 2007 in response to this tactic. Others are from bloggers — often, well meaning, newbie bloggers —- who send mass generic e-mails that cause me to inwardly groan, along the lines of, “Hey! Cool blog! Want to exchange links?”
Let me be clear, though: link exchanges are not e-mails from bloggers to others in the same genre inviting them to consider reading or linking to their blog because they have shared interests. If you are producing valuable content, you need to spread the word and e-mailing and networking with other bloggers is the best way to increase traffic to your site. Darren’s 11 tips to increase your chances of being linked to by another blogger boil down to two central tenets: get to know the person whose link you are asking for and produce content worthy of that link. A polite request that a person consider reading your blog is not the same thing as a request for a link in return for a link of their own.
Why do websites/bloggers want link exchanges? Link exchanges are an easy, get-rich-quick scheme to drive traffic and increase search engine results. In the short term, readers will jump to your blog, leading to more pageviews, ad revenue, and perhaps RSS subscribers.
Over the long term, links build your site’s “importance,” in the eyes of Google (and most other search engines, for that matter). A link exchange means more links for your site as well as theirs, more links leads to a higher Google PageRank, and a higher PageRank will cause a site to show up closer to the front page of Google search results, generating greater traffic for a site. Greater traffic means more ad revenue, fame, and the resulting glamour of being a hot-shot blogger.
The bad news: By participating in link exchanges, you risk injuring your reputation, the reputation of others, and angering Google. What do all successful bloggers have in common? Trust. A link might send new readers to your site but they are only going to keep reading your site if they trust that you will produce great content every week. The links on your blog are part of the content on your site; by linking to another site, you represent to your reader that the link is of good quality and will provide something valuable to the reader. If a reader clicks on a link that takes them to a site filled with ads for pills and dating programs, or to a blog that produces worse content than your own, the reader is going to question your judgment and wonder why you chose to link to that site. Nobody likes the guy who has to buy his friends. Unfortunately, by linking to one lousy site, you also devalue the other good sites on your blog. Bad for you, bad for your friends.
And, you certainly don’t want to irritate the most powerful player on the web. Google carries 71% of the search engine market and they hate link schemes. Google is in the business of providing the most accurate website hierarchy for a particular search term and falsely inflated links to a particular site lead to poor search results. In no less than three places in their Webmaster Guidelines, Google explains that participating in link schemes, including excessive link exchanges, could “negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”
Welcome to the new Internet where content is king.
Link exchanges are part of the old Internet, a system in which PageRank ruled and social media was a fancy word for e-mail. Today, Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon drive more traffic to my blog (and, I suspect, most blogs) than links from other bloggers. In the last week of July 2010, Facebook not only dominated the social media sites but was the most visited website in the world – even more than Google – accounting for over 9% of all web traffic in that week. Facebook’s Like button and Twitter’s instantaneous communications reward interesting or useful posts without using artificial means to game a blogger’s popularity.
Google is taking advantage of this revolution with Caffeine, its web indexing system launched in June 2010 that crawls blogs, social media sites, commercial sites, and user generated content at a 50% faster rate. Previously, Google used to crawl pages once every few days or even less, resulting in stale web search results. Now, when you hit publish on your blog post, it will appear in Google search results in less than 30 minutes. This means that fresh content – whether in the form of blog posts, tweets, or Facebook posts – may be the key to landing at the top of Google searches. In fact, Google has recommended for years that webmasters stop obsessing about PageRank because it is only one of 200 factors used to determine search results.
The bottom line is that if you want to increase your readership in today’s Internet, focus on networking with other bloggers, effectively using social media tools to produce fresh content, and, most importantly, producing link-worthy content, rather than populating the Internet with infestations of spam-filled links. Maybe soon, we will all be able to sit back and bask in the sunny glow of a better, more usable Internet.
Read more from Akila at The Road Forks
Written on August 29th, 2010 at 01:08 am by Kimberly Turner
Blogosphere Trends + Storytelling
This column is written by Kimberly Turner from Regator (a great tool that gathers and organizes the world’s best blog posts) – Darren
I went tandem skydiving for my birthday in June. As the small plane packed with adrenaline junkies climbed, my blood pressure did the same. The air felt thin in my lungs. The fields below grew smaller and smaller, turning into a patchwork quilt of greens and yellows. At 14,000 feet, my instructor and I shimmied to the doorway and shoved off into the nothingness. During the thirty seconds of freefall, the noise and power of the wind were overwhelming. The ground flew up at us. As my instructor pulled the parachute, we jerked upward for a moment before I heard him say the last thing you want to hear from your tandem skydiving partner: “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no!” Our chute had tangled and we were falling past those who had jumped before us. He shouted for me to “kick to the right like your life depends on it!” I did. A few seconds later, he yelled, “Look up!” I did. The chute flapped uselessly above us, a crumpled yellow napkin on a background of blue. “Keep going!” he ordered. I did. Eventually—what must have only have been 60 seconds or less but felt like far longer—our kicking and spinning paid off. The chute’s lines spun us quickly in one direction and I felt the wind catch us, slowing us to a lazy pace as we drifted to the ground.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because today, we’re going to use the weekly blogosphere trends from Regator to talk about the importance of storytelling in blogging. I could have reported the facts: When I went skydiving, our parachute got tangled, but we were able to straighten it out and land safely. And that’s the route that many bloggers take, but the straight facts aren’t always your best bet. Telling a story in a more narrative form adds emotional impact, suspense, interest, and imagery. People communicate in stories every day and, used sparingly and appropriately, they can add a lot to your blog. Let’s see how some bloggers used storytelling to enhance posts about this week’s top stories:
Example: Huffington Post’s “My Whole Street Is a Mosque”
Lesson: Good stories have enough details to help readers form a visual. Mira Schor’s description of the streets of New York uses specifics such as the type of fake fashion accessories being sold on the street, the sort of people passing through the neighborhood, and the kind of prayer mats being used to paint a clear picture.
2. Ken Mehlman
Example: The Seminal’s “On the Luxury of ‘Coming Out’ When You Feel Like It”
Lesson: Use your own personal experiences and stories to connect with readers on an emotional level but be sure your story ties in with your post’s goal, as this one does. The fear and anger conveyed in this post are used to effectively contrast the writer’s coming out experience with Ken Mehlman’s.
3. Tiger Woods
Example: Devil Ball Golf’s “The complete Tiger Woods timeline, from Escalade to divorce”
Lesson: Stories are essentially a sequence of actions that create a plot. This post presents those actions in the form of a timeline but a narrative still forms—complete with conflicts, resolutions, and dramatic plot. Remember, something should happen in your story.
4. Afghanistan
Example: Bors Blog “Haircuts in Herat”
Lesson: Make your story captivating and interesting…in other words, not something that your readers experience in their everyday lives. This story is dramatic, engaging, and puts readers into a situation they are unlikely to experience on their own.
Example: Ad Age’s “How to Almost Sabotage a Dinner Party With Facebook ‘Places’”
Lesson: Depending on the purpose of your story, it may or may not be necessary to give a great deal of detail about the characters. Keep your focus on what’s relevant. In this post, it’s important to know that the friends involved are “20-somethings, a bunch of typical iPhone-toting over-sharers” because it directly relates to their reactions and helps make the author’s point. In my skydiving story above, it wasn’t necessary to go into detail about the instructor in order to make my point.
6. Home Sales
Example: Jalopnik’s “I Sold Everything To Buy A Lamborghini And Drive Across The Country”
Lesson: Use quotes and images where appropriate to add detail to a story. This post’s well-placed quotes and carefully chosen photos work with the text to create a fascinating story.
7. Emmy Awards
Example: TV Squad’s “Oops! Most Embarrassing Emmys Moments”
Lesson: Stories don’t have to be long. These anecdotes from the Emmys tell the tales in just one brief paragraph each, yet each has characters, conflict, and resolution—condensed yet appropriate in this application.
8. Pakistan
Example: Journeys to Democracy’s “Personal Note: Flood Relief in Remote Kohistan”
Lesson: The best stories have their fair share of suspense. Readers feel anxious to know the outcome and, therefore, won’t stop reading until the end. This post’s account of a “grueling 20-hour journey” uses tension well.
Example: PopWatch’s Miss Universe: Help me convince myself to watch
Lesson: Stories can be used to establish camaraderie with readers rather than to create tension and suspense. The introductory paragraph of this post isn’t particularly dramatic but does establish common ground with any other readers who were snarky with girlfriends in junior high or who grew up watching pageants. It also allows the blogger to share a bit of her personality.
10: The Walking Dead
Example: Warming Glow’s “Oh My God, ‘The Walking Dead’ Trailer Is Amazing”
Lesson: Move beyond text to visually tell a story. Videos are, obviously, a great medium for storytelling and while this blog didn’t create the video included here, it is very appropriate for the readership and one heck of a good story.
Your turn! Have you recently used a story on your blog? Please share a link and any tips you may have in the comments. If not, give it a try this week and report back.
Kimberly Turner is a cofounder of Regator.com and Regator for iPhone as well as an award-winning print journalist. You can find her on Twitter @kimber_regator.
Written on August 28th, 2010 at 12:08 am by Darren Rowse
How to Get More Done
The most common question I’m asked lately seems to be:
“How do you get so many things done?”
To be perfectly honest – it’s a question I would never have anticipated anyone would ever ask of me – as I’ve mentioned here before, before I got into blogging I used to be quite…. well…. lazy.
But since getting into blogging and starting my own business I have turned that around – at least on a work front (Mrs ProBlogger would still like me to do the dishes a little more). Over the last 6 years there may have only been 1-2 days when I didn’t post at least two blog posts – deadlines were never my forte but I’m somewhat obsessed about them now.
Today while out for a walk (something I try to fit in most days) I was pondering this change in me and trying to work out what was behind it. I came up with two things that at the least play a part in this for me and decided to whip out my iPhone and record them as a mini podcast (or walkcast).
PS: my 2nd point reminds me a little of a line in a poem by Rudyard Kipling that I’ve been pondering lately titled IF.
“
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it”
I’m sure there are many interpretations on it – but for me the idea of an unforgiving minute is that time is something that you can’t get back. The next minute of your life is something that will be gone for ever in 60 seconds – in that way it’s unforgiving.
So Kipling suggests filling it with sixty seconds of distance running. Sixty seconds of effort that will make a lasting difference. You might not do a complete marathon in sixty seconds of effort but you’ll certainly be a step closer to it.
Written on August 27th, 2010 at 01:08 am by Darren Rowse
Premium WordPress Plugins – What are Your Favourites?
Yesterday I asked readers to suggest their favourite free WordPress plugins. The response was great and I’ll pull together a compilation of the most mentioned ones in the coming weeks.
However I’d also love to get your suggestions on the most useful Premium WordPress Plugins.
Over the last few years we’ve seen more and more premium (or paid) WordPress plugins released. At first many bloggers were skeptical about paying for plugins but of late I’ve noticed a bit of a shift and more and more bloggers are willing to pay for quality premium plugins.
If you’re a blogger who has forked out a few dollars for a premium WordPress plugin – I’d love to get your feedback on which ones you’ve found most useful.
So which are your favourite Premium WordPress Plugins – and Why?
Written on August 26th, 2010 at 01:08 am by Darren Rowse
Free WordPress Plugins – What are Your Favourites?
It has been a while since we had a survey on the topic of WordPress plugins so today I’d like to kick one off. What are your favourite FREE WordPress Plugins?
Try to keep it to your top 5 so that things don’t get out of hand – but please share which free WordPress plugins are most useful to you in comments below.
If you have some premium/paid ones that you want to suggest – please hold off on sharing those as I’ll run a post later in the week asking for your feedback on those.
So – what are you favourite free WordPress Plugins – and Why? Over to you!
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