Written on February 10th, 2010 at 06:02 am by Darren Rowse
Blog Like a Cartoonist – Six Stunning Secrets to Help You Break Through Bloggers Block
And now for a guest post with a difference from Cartoonist Mark Anderson from Andertoons.com who created this comic to illustrate the writing techniques he uses to create his cartoons, and how they can help bloggers push through writer’s block.
Written on February 10th, 2010 at 12:02 am by Darren Rowse
Have a 37 Minute Coffee Break with Me [Audio Interview]
If you have a spare 37 minutes today to grab a coffee with me (or at least are doing something that will allow you to listen to something for 37 minutes in the background) check out this interview I did with Robb Sutton late last week. Robb’s also transcribed it for those who prefer to read.
In the interview Rob asks me about a whole range of stuff including:
- my background in blogging
- my philosophy on lots of sites vs focusing upon a single (or just a few) sites
- the process of going full time (and my wife’s six month ultimatum)
- my shift in focus to e-books and membership sites
- a little about Third Tribe
- finding readers for a blog
- my best advice for new bloggers
- a number of more personal questions like, favourite, food, drink, about the car I drive, the brand of camera I use
Hope you find the interview interesting.
Written on February 9th, 2010 at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse
What Is Your Blogging Goal for February?
A few days back I asked readers a question:
What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back?
Some of the responses to the question in comments (and via email and Twitter) revealed a lot of bloggers really wanting to step things up and get what they’ve been putting off done.
So – lets set some goals – what do you want to achieve by the end of February?
I’m not going to be calling you up to check up to see if you’re meeting your goals – but hopefully in putting them down publicly you’ll find yourself a little more spurred on to reach what you want to achieve.
My Goal for February: I want to get a new E-Book out the door by the end of the month.
Written on February 8th, 2010 at 01:02 am by Daniel Scocco
9 Tricks I Used To Triple My AdSense Earnings In 30 Days
Guest post by Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips.
I have been using Google AdSense to monetize my blogs and websites for as long as I remember. In fact it was the first method I ever tried (I made a whooping $15 on my first month… back in 2005). Over the years I migrated to other methods (e.g., direct sponsors and affiliate marketing), which made AdSense become merely an inventory filler. I was still making around $1,000 monthly from it, but whenever I could I would use other methods over it.
Then some months ago I started noticing an upward trend on the CPC of my sites, and I figured that I should give AdSense another try. I started applying some tricks here and there, and the next month I made over $3,000 with it (that is combining all my sites). I was pleasantly surprised, and I decided to keep using it actively on some sites.
In this article I want to share with you the tips and tricks I used to triple my AdSense earnings in one month.
1. I added units to my Big Websites
Daily Blog Tips and Daily Writing Tips are my largest websites in terms of traffic. They are getting close to one million monthly page views (combined). Despite that I was not using AdSense on them, mainly because the direct sponsorship model was working relatively well.
Some months ago I decided to load some AdSense units on the sites, however, and the results were very positive. Around 70% of the boost I generated to my earnings came from these two sites. At the same time I managed to keep the other monetization methods working fine, and no reader ever complained about the new ads (more on that later).
Even if your blog is already making money with direct sponsors and affiliate marketing, therefore, you could still manage to increment your earnings by strategically adding some AdSense units.
2. I added units to my Small Websites
As many webmasters do, I have a bunch of small websites scattered around the web. Some are on free hosted platforms like Blogger, and others are self hosted sites that I abandoned along the way. Most of these sites still get traffic, however. Not much, but combined the numbers get decent.
I figured that adding AdSense units to all these sites could yield some money, and I was right. The main reason is that, since these are abandoned sites and don’t have loyal visitors, I can place the units very aggressively. The result was a very high CTR (Click-through rate), which compensates the small traffic levels.
Don’t underestimate the earning potential of small websites, especially if you are willing to place AdSense units aggressively.
3. I used the Large Units
If you want to make money with AdSense you’ll inevitably need to use one of these units: the 336×280 large rectangle, the 300×250 rectangle, the 120×600 large skyscraper or the 728×90 leaderboard.
Whenever I tried to use smaller units the results were disappointing. Even if I positioned them aggressively the CTR was just too low.
All four units mentioned above can produce good results, but the best performing one is by far the 336×280 large rectangle, and that is the one I used to boost my earnings.
4. I placed the Units above the Fold
My first trial was to place the 336×280 large rectangle between the post and the comments section of my blogs. The results were OK. I then decided to try placing them below the post titles for one week, and the CTR skyrocketed. In fact I still need to find a placement/unit combination that will beat placing a 336×280 unit below post titles.
I knew this rule, but I guess I needed to test and get confirmation. The rule is: if you want to make money with Google AdSense, you must place your units above the fold.
5. I Focused on Organic Traffic
My main concern with adding a large AdSense unit right below my post titles was that some of the loyal readers could get annoyed with it. At the same time I knew that loyal readers become ad blind quite fast, and that the bulk of my money would come from organic visitors (i.e., people coming via search engines to my posts).
To solve this problem I decided to display the large rectangle only on posts older than seven days (using the Why Do Work WordPress plugin). It worked like a charm, as loyal readers don’t even notice the ad units when they are browsing through my recent posts, and organic visitors almost always see the ads because they usually land on posts older than seven days.
6. I started using AdSense for Search
I was not sure how much money I would be able to make with AdSense for Search, but I was not happy with the search results provided by WordPress, so I decided to give it a shot anyway.
Currently I am making around $60 monthly with AdSense for Search. It is not much, but if you sum it over one year we are talking about $720. On top of that the search results are as relevant as you’ll get, so it is a win win situation.
7. I started using AdSense for Feeds
Another AdSense product I decided to try was the AdSense for Feeds one. I opted to display the ads below my feed items (you can also place them on top, but this would be too intrusive in my opinion). The results here were pretty good, both in terms of CTR and earnings.
You obviously need a large RSS subscriber base to make this work, but I am guessing that even with a couple thousand subscribers you could already make $100 monthly from feed ads.
8. I played around with section targeting
Section targeting is an AdSense feature that allows you to suggest specific sections of your site that should be used when matching ads. You can read more about it here.
I found that on niche and small websites section targeting can help a lot. Often times Google was displaying unrelated ads on these sites because there weren’t enough pages. After using section targeting I managed to increase the relevancy of the ads and consequently the CTRs.
9. I tested with Different Colors and Fonts
If you enabled both image and text ads on your units you should be able to customize the colors and fonts. I did some testing with both of these factors, and it helped to increase the numbers. Nothing dramatic, but it was definitely worth my time.
You just need to track your CTR for a couple of weeks. Then change the color or font and track it for another week, seeing if you can beat the original CTR. If you can, keep the new format. If you the performance decreased, try a new color or font and track the CTR for another week, until you find the optimal combination.
On my sites the best results came from making the ad units merge with the look of the site, but on some sites contrasting colors perform better, so testing is a must.
Daniel is the owner of Daily Blog Tips. He is also the author of the Make Money Blogging ebook, which you can download for free by signing up to his newsletter.
Written on February 7th, 2010 at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse
How I Got Some Paying Sponsors Without Really Meaning To
A guest post by Josh Hanagarne.
World’s Strongest Librarian was about four months old when I got interested in sponsors. I’d read the articles about how to do it, and none of them sounded that plausible for me and my situation.
For one, my traffic wasn’t impressive, certainly not to the point where sponsors were approaching me. And, while my blog has become slightly more focused in its first ten months, it wasn’t targeted at any group of readers in particular, so I wasn’t sure how confident niche advertisers would be. It’s a little more focused now, but I can’t really think of a better term for my readers than “The Loyal Weird.”
So I tried a little sponsorship experiment. My expectations were virtually non-existent. I did it more out of curiosity than anything, hoping that it would engage readers and foster some good will.
Here’s what happened.
Auditions and criteria
I decided to hold “tryouts” for anyone who was interested in a sponsorship slot on World’s Strongest Librarian. If you like, you can read my initial post here. If you’re terrified of leaving this page because there’s so much wisdom in the air, here’s the summary of what I asked interested readers to do:
Dear potential sponsor, please give me:
- One paragraph on something you did in the last year that you are proud of
- Your URL
- A description of your blog/business
- Why you’re interested in running an ad on World’s Strongest Librarian
- Your pitch: Why you? Just how cool are you?
And I made it very clear that I did not care about the size or look of the blog. As long as a blogger wasn’t peddling anything heinous, illegal, or spammy, they had as good a chance as anyone.
I would run auditions for the rest of August and then make my decisions.
The plan at that point
I figured that I’d get a small response and run ads for the four people who responded out of pity. Then I’d run their ads for the month of September. When September was winding down, I would thank each blogger, ask them if they wanted to pay for another month or more to stick around, or part ways while remaining friends.
I figured I’d repeat this cycle for a few months until all of the ads were paid for. Then I’d end the auditions.
What I didn’t expect
I got a lot of responses. In fact, I got close to 100 auditions. Some were lengthy and hilarious. Others were half-hearted and poorly written. Some came very close to flat-out begging, and others were so standoffish that I couldn’t tell if they were actually interested or not.
The good things about this
Any reader response and engagement can feel like a huge win for the new blogger. So of course it was gratifying to see that there were people paying attention.
I also learned just how eclectic my reader base was. I got emails from bloggers covering every topic and angle imaginable. I got emails from foundations. I got emails from businesses. Word spread, and suddenly I had a bunch of new readers, and some readers I’d never engaged with came forth out of hiding.
The bad things about this
There’s really only one: because I had underestimated the response, I hadn’t really thought through my judging criteria. And suddenly I had a mountain of auditions to sift through. It was really, really hard to decide. And in a couple of cases, I wound up choosing in a more arbitrary manner than I was happy with, but I couldn’t figure out a better way at that point.
Here is my post announcing the winners.
This caused some hurt feelings, a lot of negative emails from disappointed applicants, demands for explanations of how I chose…and so on.
“Okay,” I thought. “Next round, I’ve got to do this better.”
There wasn’t going to be a next round.
The best things about this
A couple of the winners left after one month with no hard feelings between us. But several of them stayed…and paid. When I was able to show them their click-through rates and they told me how “sticky” the traffic from my blog had been, I didn’t need to convince them at all. And suddenly I had a very, very modest income from sponsors—but I had sponsors!
I was also spared the difficulty of going through another round of auditions and making people mad.
It also got a lot of people blogging about the experiment, and of course, the traffic was its own reward.
Suggestions for anyone interested in trying this
- Overestimate the response you’ll get, this way you (hopefully) won’t get overwhelmed
- Explain your judging criteria. You may still have some sore losers, but having a prior explanation to fall back on may be helpful
- Give it your own spin
- Decide which system you’re going to use to display ads with, and figure it out earlier than the night before you’re supposed to run the ads. I can be a real dunce. This was one prime example of my duncery.
Your own variant of this experiment could be a way to grab some sponsors and figure out how some things work before your numbers are commanding sponsors on their own.
Above all: enjoy it, have fun, and use this experiment opportunity to make connections, spark some creativity, and do your own thing.
Don’t try too hard to be like anyone else. You are not anyone else. This is a good thing, whether you believe it or not.
About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.
Written on February 6th, 2010 at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse
29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging
Do you want a formula to guarantee the success of your blog?
Yesterday I was interviewed by a journalist about blogging and half way though the interview he asked me what the formula for successful blogging was.
His question was innocent enough and asked without agenda but as I pondered it and pondered the many successful blogs that we see in our medium it became very clear to me that while it might be simpler to have a formula to follow to make our blogs succeed that there are many many different approaches to success in this field.
One of the things that I love about blogging is that there really is no wrong or right way to do what we do and for every ‘rule’ us people who blog about blogging might write – there is always an exception of a blog that has done the opposite and still had good results.
Yes there are some principles that we might see in many successful blogs – but even as I’ve been recently exploring some of these I see examples of blogs that buck the system and succeed despite doing so.
Last year I came up with a list of ‘debates’ in blogging to illustrate some of the diversity of approaches in blogging. Recently – after being accused of being too narrow in my focus – I revisited the list and added a number of ‘debates’ to illustrate the variety of approaches that bloggers take.
All in all I’ve come up with 29 areas that bloggers take different approaches in – yet there would be many many more.
Some of them are debates that might come down to a bloggers ethics, although most are simply different approaches that might be based more upon a bloggers goals, the niche that they’re in and the type of audience that they’re attempting to connect with.
29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging
- RSS Feeds - Full vs Partial Feeds
- Comment Sections – Comments vs No Comments
- Post Frequency – Post More vs Post Less
- How Many Blogs? – Focus upon One Single Blog vs Having Many Smaller Blogs
- 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
- Post Titles – descriptive vs keywords
- Content – Link content vs Original content
- Paid Reviews – Happy to Write Paid Reviews vs Not Doing Paid Reviews
- Design – Professional Design vs Templates
- Links to External Sources – Should Open in a New Page vs Should Open in the Same Page
- Ownership – Use Social Media vs Build Your own properties
- Post Length – Long in Depth Posts vs Short, Sharp Posts
- Topic – Niche vs Broad Topics
- Dating Posts – Dates on Posts vs Non Dated
- Blogger Name – Anonymous blogging vs Using Your Name
- Subscribers – RSS is Best vs Email is Best
- SEO – Writing for Search Engines vs Writing for Humans
- Personal Blogging – Sticking to Topic vs Injecting Personality and Personal details
- Comment Moderation – Highly Regulated and Moderated vs Anything Goes
- Social Media vs Search – focus upon social media rather than search engines as traffic sources
- LinkBait – Anything goes (e.g.. Personal Attacks) vs Strong Boundaries Around What is and Isn’t Acceptable
- Bloggers Participation in Comments – Respond to Every Single Comment vs Let Readers Talk to Each Other and Don’t Interact
- Blog Platforms – WordPress vs ((Insert Other Platforms Here))
- Monetization – Blogs Should Be Monetized vs Blogs Should Never Be Monetized
- Affiliate Disclosure – Disclose every affiliate link vs Site Wide Disclosure vs No Disclosure
- When To Start Monetizing – From Day 1 vs Once You Have an Audience
- Text Links – To Sell them vs Not Selling Them
- Outsourcing – Outsourcing content (or other aspects of blogging) vs producing your own.
Some of the above debates are over things that some bloggers feel quite strongly about (there are a few that I do) – but in almost every one there are blogs doing a full spectrum of things.
I wanted to share this updated list mainly to celebrate our diversity and variety as bloggers and in the hope that those who might be looking for ‘the formula’ might see that there’s a wonderful array of choice at our finger tips and with that comes a lot of freedom to forge our own paths as individuals.
Written on February 5th, 2010 at 01:02 am by Lara Kulpa
What does treating your blog “Like a Business” really mean?
Guest post by Mike CJ.
“Treat your blog like a business” is something we’re told all the time. It’s solid advice, assuming you want or plan to make an income from your blog, and adopting it as a mindset often leads to the successful transition from a blog into a business.
But what does it actually mean?
Have a proper accounts system
Record income and expenses as they happen. Monitor cashflow – every day if things are tight. There are so many tools out there to help you do this, and many of them are free to use. Outright is one of the easiest.
Set objectives
The blogosphere is full of objective-setting posts at this time of year. Most of them revolve around traffic and subscribers. And that’s fine, but if you do want to blog professionally, you need to have financials behind those. You need to know what you’re going to earn over the next year.
Set budgets
Once you know what’s coming in, set yourself some spending budgets. How much of your income are you going to re invest in the business? For training? Software? Marketing? By setting budgets, it makes buying decisions so much easier. Do you want to advertise your new book here on Problogger? Don’t waste hours wringing your hands trying to decide. If it’s in budget do it, if it isn’t, don’t.
Seek opinions and advice
Most “real” businesses, even small ones, don’t run in a vacuum with the proprietor making every decision. And yet many blogs do just that! Get as much advice as you can, from your partner, your bank, your accountant and from other bloggers.
Produce reports
Monthly or quarterly, produce a report showing how the business is performing against the various targets. Examine what went well, and what didn’t. Use the findings to inform your planning for the next period. The act of producing the report itself is effective, but it’s even better if you have to present it to someone else – even if it’s your partner.
Enter into collaborations
Working with other bloggers can really accelerate your success, as well as theirs. Seek out opportunities with like minded people you see around the web.
Use professional tools
It’s too easy to let yourself down with poor design, a tatty invoice or by not having a business card. None of the accoutrements of being in business cost a fortune – they’re a small expense compared to the loss of image when they aren’t right.
Invest in training
Every business should have a training budget – choose the right books, courses and memberships and you’ll get a far greater return than the initial cost.
Treat your readers like customers
Typically only a very small percentage of blog readers will ever become customers by buying something from you – most will simply enjoy the mass of free content you put out there. And that’s fine. But treat every one of them as a potential paying client, and that percentage will slowly increase over time.
Those are my thoughts about treating your blog like a business. What would you add?
Mike CJ is a full time professional blogger and author. He lives in the idyllic Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa. You can find out more about Mike on his blog Mike’s Life and catch up with him on Twitter @mikecj
Written on February 4th, 2010 at 03:02 am by Darren Rowse
The Third Tribe – Launched [My Back Story]
Just over 48 hours ago those of you on my newsletter list would have received an email from me introducing a new venture that I’ve been working on – The Third Tribe.
Third Tribe is a new collaboration between myself, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone.
I’m going to tell some of my story of why I’m involved in this venture below – but if you want to skip straight to the offer you can read the story behind Third Tribe, what it is and how you can be involved here.
Third Tribe – A Conversation Between Two Worlds
If you were at Blog World Expo last year you might have seen a panel that the four of us were on where we began to explore the topic of our journey as online marketers trying to find our place between two groups of people who we didn’t always feel quite at home with.
Of course these two groups don’t really exist as groups – they’re generalisations and are probably more two extremes of a spectrum we all find ourselves somewhere on – but they are:
- Traditional Internet Marketers – known for their hype, at times obnoxious, annoying and manipulative tactics.
- Social Media Cool Crowd – known for their ethics, value of community and relationships – but also renowned for struggling to make what they do profitable.
Over the years I’ve felt like I’ve spent a little time in both groups. I’ve been to their conferences, tried their ‘tactics’ and ‘approaches’ and attempted to fit in. I’ve also, at different times, swung too far into either camp and done and said things that I now regret.
Tangent Time – A Story of 2 Conferences
I remember speaking at one internet marketing conference a few years back – my first – there were fireworks…. literally and figuratively. My memories of that week include
- speakers selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of coaching and product from the stage (I saw people literally run to signup)
- a presentation on how one internet marketer was setting up hundreds of meaningless blogs to game Google and make money
- one speaker make an entrance that included a light show and fireworks
- a movie star coming to sign autographs
Some of what I saw was amazing – much of it left me feeling quite uncomfortable and out of place.
Mixed in with all that there were also some amazingly genuine and smart people who made a real impression on me and taught me a lot despite being surrounded by hype.
I also remember another conference a few years ago – it was a social media event where I was invited to speak about making money from blogging and social media. In retrospect I think I was actually set up by the organizers who knew those attending would want to shoot me down in flames.
The Q&A time was filled with biting questions – the theme of which was that social media should not EVER be used for anything other than relationships, community and social good. Marketing or profit was certainly not welcome in social media in these people’s minds.
Of course at the event were also some amazing people who I also learned a lot from about the value of community and the power of social media to do good.
I tell these stories for two reasons:
- there are things about these two groups of people that I’ve learned a lot form and resonate a lot with. Much of what I do is based upon elements that I’ve picked up along the way from a variety of people all along the spectrum.
- there are things about both groups which leave me either uncomfortable or in some kind of conflict. I do want to make money online – but I don’t want to resort some some of the extreme, deceptive and hyped tactics I see happening around the web.
I’m not the only one who feels a little out of place between these two extremes. I meet people who grapple with these same things regularly.
Back to The Third Tribe
Brian and Sonia started blogging about these same themes last year and the idea of a ‘Third Tribe’ began to emerge as a term to describe those of us in the middle. Chris Brogan joined the conversation and then I jumped in and we began to plan a panel for Blog World.
The more we talked about the Third Tribe concept and the journey that we’d been on to find our place as online marketers the more people began to come out of the woodwork expressing similar experiences and feelings. We decided it was time to call people together and provide those wanting to explore the topic with some training on what we were learning and a place to connect with others on the journey.
As you’ll see in the story on Third Tribe – there’s an amazing group of people lined up to share their journey with Third Tribe members. What’s better still is that since launching 48 hours ago we’ve had may others join and begin to interact – the depth of what’s being shared is fantastic (there’s already over 1000 posts on a great range of topics) and I can see that there are going to be a lot of great collaborations emerge out of this.
The other reason I’m excited about Third Tribe is the mix of people involved all bring such a wonderful collection of skills, strengths and experiences. We’ve got people with experience in copy writing, social media, building membership sites, E-Book marketers, SEOs, affiliate marketers, those who use social media to market their real world businesses…. and much more.
The Offer
As we’re still growing and shaping The Third Tribe we’ve set up a discounted Charter Member Offer for those who join in the first week. This is partly to thank those in our current network but also simply because the site is still growing and those who join now help us to build it with their contributions in the forum (thus they should get a discount).
Third Tribe Marketing is a paid membership site. If you sign up before February 5th at 6PM (Central Time – GMT -6), as a Charter Member the cost is $27 USD a month (you’re locked in at that price even after the price rise). If you sign up next week, the cost jumps to $47 a month.
You can see what the deal entails and what you get on the inside of the TT here.
Of course both the topic and the deal will not fit for everyone. If you don’t resonate with where we are at or don’t find the deal is where you’re at we’re not wanting to pressure anyone to join up.
You’re welcome to sign up and trial things for up to 30 days – it it’s not where you’re at you’re welcome to a refund.
Join us Today
I’m really excited by The Third Tribe and hope you’ll consider joining us.
Written on February 4th, 2010 at 01:02 am by Darren Rowse
Craftsmanship – Principles of Successful Blogs #9
As we continue to explore principles of successful blogging I want to turn our attention to a matter at the heart of the topic – content.
Much could be said on the topic but in the presentation that sparked my principles of successful blogging series of posts I spoke at length about the idea of ‘crafting content‘.
The idea of of successful bloggers displaying ‘craftsmanship’ began to strike me after meeting a number of pretty high profile bloggers at the SXSW interactive conference a few years back. I remember sitting down at that conference with a number of bloggers who’d build great blogs to pick their brains and having the realisation that their blogs had not ‘just happened’ but that they’d really put time, energy and thought into shaping them over the years.
This ’shaping’ of their blogs happened on two levels – it happened on a daily basis in the posts that they wrote – but also over time as their blogs grew and matured.
Crafting Blog Posts
My own experience of blogging is that in my early days of experimenting with the medium I would tend to sit down at the computer on any given day and then put up on the web whatever I was thinking about at that moment and within seconds of punching out a first draft the post would be live online.
- little thought went into the planning of posts
- no more time than was absolutely necessary was put into the writing of posts
- no consideration was really ever given to improving posts before they went live
- it was rare that I gave thought to how to time, launch and promote posts
My blogging was very impulsive and minimalistic in terms of how much effort I put into the most important factor of blogging – the content on it.
I got away with this to some degree, perhaps partly due to the fact that the blogosphere was in its infancy – but look back on that time now wondering how much more I could have achieved early on if I’d just given more time to ‘crafting’ my content.
Don’t get me wrong – I still sit down some days to impulsively write – but over time I’ve found that I get better results if I take a more craftsman-like approach to blogging.
One of the factors that changed my own approach to blogging was out of the experience of beginning to write series of posts on my blogs.
I don’t even remember what the first series was (or why I did it) but I do remember the realization of how much better my writing was when I put some time into planning what I would write ahead of time.
Setting oneself the task of writing a series of posts ahead of time mean you need to consider what you’ll write about (in general terms) but knowing what topics you’ll be covering in the future means that your ideas begin to marinate ahead of time and that by the time you come to write your posts you’ve given the topics thought, you’ve got ideas on how to explore it on a deeper level and you’ve hopefully got some creative ides of how to introduce and explore the topic in a way that makes the post stand out a little.
Crafting Content can happen on many levels and depending upon the type of blog you have you might not find them all to be relevant to every blog post you write – however here’s a series of posts that I wrote on the topic in 2008 that was designed to help bloggers consider ways that take a little extra time could improve their blogging:
- How to Craft a Blog Post – 10 Crucial Points to Pause
- Choosing a Topic – take a little extra time defining your topic and the post will flow better and you’ll develop something that matters to readers.
- Crafting Your Post’s Title – perhaps the most crucial part of actually getting readers to start reading your post when they see it in an RSS reader or search engine results page.
- The Opening Line – first impressions matter. Once you’ve got someone past your post’s title your opening line draws them deeper into your post.
- Your ‘point/s’ (making your posts matter) - a post needs to have a point. If it is just an intriguing title and opening you’ll get people to read – but if the post doesn’t ‘matter’ to them it’ll never get traction.
- Call to Action – driving readers to do something cements a post in their mind and helps them to apply it and helps you to make a deeper connection with them.
- Adding Depth – before publishing your post – ask yourself how you could add depth to it and make it even more useful and memorable to readers?
- Quality Control and Polishing of Posts – small mistakes can be barriers to engagement for some readers. Spending time fixing errors and making a post ‘look’ good can take it to the next level.
- Timing of Publishing Your Post – timing can be everything – strategic timing of posts can ensure the right people see it at the right time.
- Post Promotion – having hit publish – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Giving it a few strategic ‘nudges’ can increase the exposure it gets exponentially.
- Conversation – often the real action happens once your post is published and being interacted with by readers and other bloggers. Taking time to dialogue can be very fruitful.
Crafting Blogs on a Big Picture Level
The other level that I think bloggers could do well to apply the idea of craftsmanship to is thinking about the big picture of a blog and seeing the blog, in its entirety, as something that needs crafting.
Over a time as a blog grows and matures it takes on a certain shape and form.
The accumulated body of content, the voice and personality behind the content, the visual design of the blog and even the interaction with readers and emerging community are all things that go into how a blog is perceived.
Some blogs manage to evolve without much thought in a good direction – but behind the scenes of most successful blogs there is a person or team of people who are shaping the blog, plotting its course and making sure that it stays on that course.
I spoke once with a museum curator who told me about her job and it reminds me on some levels of what I do on my blogs.
Curators do many tasks to get an exhibition together – good exhibitions don’t just happen. Their work starts with careful planning, research, study and sourcing of exhibits well before an exhibition takes place.
They are not only involved in deciding what to exhibit but they’re also involved in what to leave out of exhibitions (avoiding clutter and confusion for those attending).
Once they’ve sourced the exhibits they’re involved in arranging them and making sure that they are presented in a way that draws people in and takes them on a journey.
As I spoke with this curator about the care in which she put together an exhibition (a process that took a lot of detailed thought and energy over considerable time) I was challenged to apply some of what I saw in my own blogging.
Great blogs don’t just happen – they take thoughtful consideration, planning and shaping. They too are not just about what you publish but about what you don’t publish. They too take thought as you consider the journey you want to take your reader on.
Written on February 3rd, 2010 at 06:02 am by Darren Rowse
What Have You Been Putting Off and What’s Holding You Back?
In a quiet moment yesterday I asked my Twitter network:
“what’s one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what’s stopping you from doing it now?)”
The answers were quite varied – everything from redesigns, to writing E-Books, to posting more regularly to SEO optimization, to monetization.
A number of people reflected that just being asked the question helped them to move forward with things that they’d been procrastinating with – so I thought I’d ask the question again here on the blog.
Of course there can be good reasons for putting things off – timing is important and you can’t do everything at once – but if you’re anything like me there are things that you know you probably should be doing that you’re simply procrastinating about.
For me one of the big procrastinations for me until mid last year was creating a product of my own. I’d always said I’d write an E-Book – but every time I sat down to do it I never got past the planning stage (I have notebooks with about 10 different plans that never eventuated).
Why didn’t I do it? Was it laziness…. or busyness….? If I’m honest about it I’m sure it’d be a bit of both of those things – however I suspect it was also partly fear that held me back.
Fear that it’d flop, fear that nobody would buy it, fear that people would critique me for selling something and not giving it away for free, fear that it wouldn’t be perfect, fear that perhaps I didn’t have it in me to create a product like I wanted….
Actually – saying I was too busy might sound a bit better – I sound very insecure!
In the end – I knew that if I didn’t create an E-Book that I’d be kicking myself later. The time came for me to draw a line in the sand and just do it. I don’t have any secret strategies for getting over the hump of getting myself into gear really.
I did tell a couple of others that I was doing it – I did set aside two days purely to put it together – I did engage the services of someone to help me design it – I did set myself a deadline.
All of that helped me get going but in the end it was a change of attitude that got me over the hump.
“what’s one thing that you have been putting off that would improve your blog? (and what’s stopping you from doing it now?)”
PS: one of the reasons I started ProBlogger.com was to help those of us who procrastinate to be accountable to others. A number of our members over there are setting themselves (and each other) challenges to help them keep moving forward.
For example Paul recently set a challenge for members to create a free report/e-book to give away (that link is only viewable by members). What’s exciting to me is that a number of members have actually got their reports ready and launched as a result of working together in this way rather than just tackling their list of things that they must do alone.
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