“Hey Darren, I just thought of a blogging question so I’ve come all the way over write a list of all your blog topics first, then plan to write one of them per then try and think of a fresh new blog topic every day?”

Here’s my answer (I’d be keen to hear yours in comments).

James - I generally suggest a few things with regards to content when I’m starting a new blog.

1. 5 Posts Already Published

I like to have at least 5, preferably 8-10, articles already published on the blog - so when people come they can see you’ve written useful stuff already and don’t just see a blog with one post.

At b5media we ask our bloggers to have around 10 posts already written before we launch but I think 5 would be my minimum.

2. 5 Draft Posts

I also like to have at least 5 posts already written but held in reserve as drafts that I can post in the next few days after launch.

I find that when launching a blog you can be a bit distracted by the excitement of it all, by promoting it, by responding to comments etc - so content creation can sometimes take a bit of a back seat.

If you have 5 posts in reserve (I’d even prefer to have more than that) it means you can keep any momentum from the launch going for at least 5 days without having to write a whole lot more. In fact I usually start a blog with just 3 posts a week and gradually increase the frequency of posts over time - so 5 posts in reserve can almost last two weeks.

3. 20 Post Ideas

Lastly - I also like to have a list of possible topics to write about in future (I try for at least 20).

I actually like to write this list as part of the process of even deciding whether to choose a topic or niche because it helps me to work out whether I’ll be able to sustain writing on that topic for the long haul.

If you can’t think of 20-30 post titles/topics pretty easily before starting a blog it could be a signal that you’ve chosen the wrong topic.

Having this list at your fingertips means you’ve always got a topic to write about in the first month or so of your new blog.

And You’re Off and Running

I find that between having a few posts already up on the blog, having a few in reserve for the coming few days and then having a list of topics to write about that creating content for a new blog is not that difficult.

The numbers of posts that I’ve mentioned above will vary from person to person (and even for me I’ve not always exactly followed this formula) but I think it’s probably a pretty solid way forward.

The only thing I’ll add is that it’s really important to put your best foot forward in terms of the quality of your content in the early days of a blog.

Of course you’ll want high quality posts as every post on your blog going forward - but a few really high quality and engaging posts in the first week of your blog can really launch it and help establish some good traffic and subscriber numbers in the early days of its life.

What Do You Do When Starting a Blog?

I’m interested to hear what your experience is with creating content on a new blog? How many posts do you launch with? How do you keep the posts coming in the early day of a blog?

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A few days ago, I created the first implementation of TweetBacks (see the WP plugin here), which is a porting of the idea of trackbacks to Twitter. By first reverse engineering a bunch of the most popular URL shortening services, it then searches Twitter for Tweets that link to your post. These Tweets are then displayed under your original post (either above or below your comments section).

Beyond simply adding a new layer to the conversation and allowing your readers greater flexibility in how they choose to respond to your content, it also adds an important factor in “going viral”: social proof. By showing your readers how many other people have also liked your post enough to share it, you tap into a powerful human tendency towards imitation.

I’ve written about the power of social proof in viral and social marketing before, but this is one of the most direct and effective ways to accomplish this. Tweets are a lower-commitment, easier way to share content than either traditional commenting or blogging, and therefore lowers the bar for your readers to join in the conversation.

Something like 3/4 of all ReTweets include a link, effectively making them a form of TweetBacks. I plan to integrate TweetBacks into myReTweet mapping system, moving towards a more general understanding of ReTweets. If you’re using my javascript-based implementation of TweetBacks, that system will be able to include your blog and content, and you’ll also be able to visually and granularly track its spread through Twitter.

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The point of the questions was not to engage in a navel gazing exercise but to look back with the objective of identifying how a blog has been performing in order to improve it moving forward.

Today I want to suggest a process for thinking about the future of your blog.

I’m not sure that this process appears exactly like this in any strategic thinking books or teaching but it is the process that I use when I periodically look at how my blogs and business is going.

Here’s a quick visual with some questions to explain each step in the process:

Hopefully the diagram speaks largely for itself but let me extrapolate slightly on each step.

Step 1 - Define your Mission

This is fairly big picture stuff and for me actually goes wider than just why I blog and more fits with my overall life mission. I guess it’s about looking at your overall purpose and direction - what you want to achieve etc. Having this firm in your mind then enables you to work out how blogging fits into that overall purpose.

Step 2 - Paint a Picture of Your Vision

This is still pretty long term and looks beyond the coming year to where you want to eventually take your blog. It’s a picture of a reasonably distant future. Dare to dream a little and think big in this stage.

Step 3 - Make Goals

Now we’re drilling down into the year ahead. Where do you want to be at the end of 2009? Hopefully it’ll be somewhere towards your ‘Vision’ and have helped you to accomplish some of your ‘mission’ - but what will your blog look like, be doing and have achieved this time next year? Dare to think big but keep in mind that it needs to be achievable. You don’t need to have done everything in your vision in 12 months - these goals are stepping stones to the eventual goals.

Step 4 - Devise a Strategy

What are you going to need to DO to get to your goals? Usually this means some kind of ‘change’ in your approach. Do you need to blog more, start a new blog, change your topic slightly, hire a writer, network with other bloggers more, start using a new method for promoting your blog, follow what others are writing more, build community engagement, redesign your blog etc? Think about strategies across the different activities of blogging that will take you closer to your goals.

Step 5 - Set out an Action Plan

Most people set ‘resolutions’ in their lives (and for their blogs) that are quite ‘general’ and wishy washy in nature. ‘I’m going to lose weight’, or ‘I’m going to find a girlfriend’. While these resolutions are great they are often not achieved simply because while a decision is made to do something - the person making the decision puts no actual plan in place for ‘how’ they’ll do it. The same is true for thinking strategically about your blog. ‘I’m going to get more traffic in 2009′ is a great goal - but what are you doing to specifically focus on DOING to get that traffic. Your action plan should be made up of very concrete tasks that you’ll do in the coming months. I will write 5 posts a week - I will email 7 readers each week - I will leave 1 comment per day on another blog in my niche - I will write a guest post for another blogger each month - I will run a competition on my blog in June.

The above 5 steps are the way I approach planning on my blogs (in fact it is how I do it in other areas of my life also). I actually do this for each of my blogs. The mission generally is much the same for each one and at times there are similarities in other steps.

This process will not be for everyone but I think can make a useful starting point for thinking about your blog in 2009. Some personality types will find it easier than others to think this way - actually for me it is not a natural way of thinking - I’m quite impulsive and this is a real effort to do. You might find some steps in the process more natural and quicker to complete than others but thinking things through from the big picture right down to specific tasks will hopefully help you to not only plan but make the changes you need to make in order to achieve your dreams.

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This video has been around for over a year now (I made it just after ProBlogger was last redesigned) but I think it’s particularly relevant for this time of year when many bloggers are looking at refreshing the look and feel of their blog.

First impressions matter both in real life face to face interactions with new people that you meet AND the first interactions you have with new readers. In this video I examine 5 ways you can improve the impression that you leave on first time readers and give three questions to ask when thinking about how to leave good impressions on readers.

Of course overarching all of what I mention is that your content needs to be of the highest quality to create a good first impression. Your design, titles, tag lines etc can all be amazing but unless you’ve got something useful and unique to say - the first impression will not be as good as it could be.

Further Reading:

• Run a First Time Reader Audit on Your Blog - mentioned in the video.
• How to Craft a Blog Post - a series that covers how to create content that makes good first impressions and that particularly focuses upon crafting titles and opening lines as mentioned in this video.
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky - once you’ve made a good first impression it then comes down to ‘hooking’ new readers and making them loyal to your blog. This post shows you how to do it.

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If you’re like most bloggers, you probably want to grow your readership as quickly as possible, but don’t have much time.

Unfortunately, blogging usually takes a lot of time — writing blog posts takes up a fraction of most bloggers’ time, as they also check their stats and earning multiple times a day, customize their blog design, try out new blog ad systems, comment on many different blogs, spend a lot of time doing email, and so on.

If you let it, blogging can become two full-time jobs. But get this: you can grow your blog quickly on very minimal time, by setting limits and focusing on the essentials.

I’m just one example: I grew Zen Habits into a Top 100 blog within its first year even though I was working a full-time job and doing free-lance writing on the side — giving me only about an hour a day to work on my blog, total. I probably could have spent more time blogging by working in the evenings or on weekends, but I have a family that’s more important to me than blogging.

So how did I grow Zen Habits so quickly on so little time? Well, I figured out through experimentation what grows a blog the quickest, and I learned to focus my time on those things. And guess what? Checking your blog stats and earnings — even though it’s the thing than many bloggers do most throughout the day — doesn’t really grow your blog, at all. What does? More on that below.

Limits

The key to growing your blog with minimal time investment is to set limits on how much time you’ll spend blogging. As I said, blogging can easily expand to fill your entire day, if you let it. In fact, whatever time you allocate to blogging is the time that blogging will take.

So limit your time to something manageable … for me that was 1 hour a day, for others it might be two hours or even three, and for still others it might only be 30 minutes. It really depends on how much time you have. Don’t spend less than 30 minutes on blogging, though, if you’re really serious about it. I’d say an hour to two is ideal. Any more than that and you’re not really setting limits.

So what happens if you set a limit of say, 1 hour? You could waste that hour by doing fruitless tasks, and then your blog will get nowhere. But if you’re smart, you’ll focus on the key tasks that will really help your blog, and nothing else. By setting limits, you’ll force yourself to choose only the most essential tasks.

If you gave yourself 4 hours a day, you could do a lot of tasks, but maybe only 1 out of 4 of those tasks would really grow your blog. If you gave yourself 1 hour a day, you’d have to eliminate 3 out of 4 of those tasks to fit within the time limit, and (again, if you’re smart), you’ll choose the most effective tasks.

Set a timer each day and work within the time limit. And while you’re doing so, be sure to do the most effective tasks first, and if you have time left, go to the next most effective tasks, and so on.

Essentials

So what are the most effective tasks for growing your blog? It depends on your blog, your goals, your niche, your target audience, and other such factors, but below I’ll share the things that work best for me. Other top bloggers might have different findings.

Experiment to find your essential tasks, and once you’ve found them, focus on them completely. Here are my essential tasks for growing a blog:

1. Writing outstanding articles. This is the No. 1 essential, by far. If you only do one thing each day, this is it. A great post might take more than an hour — that’s OK, do half of it today and half tomorrow. The main reason people come to your blog, and the main reason they’ll keep coming back or subscribe, is because your content is amazingly useful (or interesting, or both). So focus on creating those posts they’ll really want to read. You should be coming out with outstanding posts, with catchy titles/headlines, at least once a week, and probably 2-5 times a week (I am for 4 these days but had 5-6 in my early days).

What is a useful post? Well, this post is an example, I hope — it contains a lot of valuable info and tips on something that people really want to do. Check out Zen Habits for more examples — I try to make almost every post an outstanding one.

2. Linking, and link-bait. This could fall under the same category as the above tip, but sometimes it gets overlooked. Linking to other blogs is a great way to help out your fellow bloggers, get them to notice you, and build up some link karma. You could do it with a daily or weekly links post, but too many of those can get tiring for readers, so I recommend you keep it to weekly at most. Instead, link to other blogs from within your useful posts, and sometimes you might consider doing “linkbait”-type posts where you do a really useful post that links to a lot of other bloggers — for example, my “Top 50 Producitivity blogs” post that I did more than a year ago … a lot of bloggers appreciated being in that post, and just as I sent a lot of traffic their way, they sent some back. Everyone wins.

3. Guest posts. If you’re not writing guest posts every week or two, on blogs that are bigger than yours (even just a little bigger is good, but the bigger the better), then you’re not really trying to promote your blog. In my early days, I did 2-3 guest posts a week on other blogs, and as a result I was everywhere. It’s the best way to promote your blog on other blogs, because you’re showing the other blog’s readers how good you are. Be sure to write your absolute best whenever you do a guest post.

4. Commenting. First, be sure to read through the comments on your blog and respond if you can — this could take just 10 minutes if you do it quickly. Second, spend another 10 minutes if you have the time to comment on other blogs — and don’t just spam them, but actually say something relevant, useful and interesting. It helps you get noticed, and helps you become a part of the network of blogs (especially in your niche).

5. Email and networking. It’s important to respond to reader email, and to network with other bloggers through email, IM, Twitter, etc. Networking helps you to grow, definitely, but if you let them, these connectivity tools can overwhelm your day. So put them last, and limit them if you can. If your time is limited, just do the emails you can process in 10 minutes. Increase that to 20-30 minutes if you have more time, but don’t spend hours on these tools.

Minimize Non-essentials

Just as it’s important to focus on the essentials, it’s crucial that you limit and try to eliminate the non-essentials as much as possible. While you have to work on these things a little, now and then, don’t let them fill your allocated blog time.

1. Blog stats and earnings. Sure, I like to check my stats daily — but only once a day, and only for a minute or two to make sure everything’s OK. In the early days I became a little obsessive about checking blog stats and earnings, but after a little while I figured out that it wasn’t a smart use of my time. Blog earnings (from ad networks such as Google Adsense) are fun to look at, but if you’re like most blogs you won’t make a lot of money in the early days, until you have a lot of readers. So focus instead on growing the readers, and worry about the earnings later.

2. Ad networks. Many bloggers get excited about earning a side income (or even a main income) from their blog and throw every ad network possible on their blog — in fact, the ads often overwhelm the content. But that’s counterproductive — readers don’t go to a blog to read the ads, and if there are too many ads, the readers might leave or unsubscribe, never to come back. Instead, consider putting no ads, or as few as possible, in your early days … you’ll miss out on very little in terms of earnings, and you’ll probably grow even faster as a result. At any rate, fiddling with ad networks is very rarely worth your time — it does nothing to grow your blog.

3. Blog design. A good blog design can definitely help grow your blog — if it’s clean, uncluttered, attractive, and professional-looking, I think a lot of readers will be more likely to stick around. But spending a lot of time on your design when you could be writing great posts is not a smart use of your time. Instead, pick a clean, uncluttered theme, customize it as needed, and leave it alone. Maybe once in awhile you can remove a little clutter to make things more attractive, but most of the time. leave it alone.

4. Blog memes. As far as I can remember, I’ve only participated in one blog meme — those things where bloggers answer the same 5 questions (or whatever) and “tag” other bloggers to do the same. That’s not because I’m stuck up, or think these memes aren’t fun. They are fun. But they’re rarely of much interest to your readers, as they’re not that useful. Sure, they like to read a little about you, but too often and you’re just stroking your ego. Stay away from these memes if you’re looking to maximize your time.

5. Reading lots of other blogs. Don’t get me wrong — you have to read other blogs, especially in your niche, to stay on top of things. But if your time is limited, your reading time should be limited too. Reading 50 blogs instead of 10 doesn’t grow your blog any more.

6. Plugins and widgets. WordPress plugins and widgets, while fun to play with, don’t grow your blog very much, if at all. Don’t mess around with them too much. Focus on content.

7. Social media. Some bloggers spend a LOT of time on Digg, StumbleUpon, and other such social media. And while it can help tremendously to have a popular post on one of these social media, spending time on them isn’t the best investment of your time. Very, very few bloggers ever become a top user on these sites — it’s really hard, and worse yet, it takes a lot of time. A better use of your time is to write a Digg-worthy post, or a post that will spread like wildfire on StumbleUpon or Delicious — not because you’re friends with lots of the users, but because it’s insanely useful, interesting, controversial, or what have you.

Focus

Even if you’ve set limits and identified the essential and non-essential tasks, it’s easy to get distracted. It’s important that you learn to clear away distractions, such as email, Twitter, IM, social sites and even general Internet browsing, so that you can focus on the important tasks.

If you look at the essential tasks that I listed above, most of them are writing — which means you could do them with the browser closed, in a word processor or text editor (this post is being written in TextEdit, for example). This really helps you to clear away distractions and focus.

Once you’re done with the writing, you can connect and comment and do email, but even then try to stay away from the distractions until you’re done. Then if you have spare time, feel free to go wild.

Read more from Leo Babauta in his new best-selling book, The Power of Less: The Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essentials … in Business and in Life.

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“I’m too shy to approach big bloggers for an interview - do you have any tips?”

Two ideas come to mind:

1. Don’t just approach ‘big’ bloggers

While many successful bloggers are willing to do interviews you might find you have more success if you target mediums sized blogs initially. While there is nothing wrong with aiming high - some bloggers are more likely to do an interview with you if you can show them a few other interviews you’ve done you might have more success.

2. One question interviews

One of the best ways to get even larger bloggers to respond is to keep your interviews very simple. The fewer the questions and the easier that they are to answer the more likely you are to get a response. Take this to the extreme with a ‘one question interview’ - a single question that is answerable in a few sentences.

You can then present the answers in a couple of ways:

1. As a single post - combine all the answers to the same question in one post. In this way you get a post that is quite long and explores the topic in a variety of ways (hopefully).

2. As a series of posts - I’ve done this a couple of times when going away for a vacation. I present each answer as a single post (or sometimes group shorter ones together) and then drip them out onto the blog over a series of days (here’s an example of the index page to one such series of one question interviews).

Not everyone will respond even to single question interviews but you’ll be surprised how many will.

Further Reading - here’s a post that I’ve previously written with 8 tips on How to Get and Conduct Interviews for Your Blog.

PS: one other point that I feel compelled to make after a day when I had a lot of requests for interviews (for some strange reason they all came at once). The feeling that I came away from most of the requests today with was ‘frustration’. The frustration came from most of the requests simply asking too much.

Over the day I had 6 requests - one of them had two questions and was quite manageable, the other 5 requests had 7, 9, 10, 11 and 15 questions attached. When I reluctantly responded to the one with 9 questions (it took 2 hours to do) the interviewer then wanted to send a series of follow up questions!

While I understand the desire to do comprehensive interviews that go beyond scratching the surface - sending someone a series of 10 or 15 questions is quite overwhelming. Unless the questions are ‘yes’ or ‘no’ type questions a question can take 10-15 minutes to answer if done comprehensively - this adds up when you ask a lot of questions.

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To be objective about his or her blog tends to be a challenge for most bloggers.

Often bloggers are in love with the ‘idea’ of their blog, so taking an impartial look at the overall ‘health’ of their blog is difficult.

Yet for continued blog growth and success a blogger must have consistent clarity!

You must take an account of where your blog has advanced and where it has declined—its strengths and weaknesses—and review it often.

At http://www.SecretsForMoney.info I am relentless when it comes to taking a cold, hard look at my blog so I encourage its successful growth. Sometimes my strategy has to change and I have to re-prioritize my action steps several times during each day, depending on what has been working and what has not during a specific timeline.

And no, that doesn’t come easy, it is tough-love.

So, I have a game to share with you that will make your time of it easier and more fun! It is a tool that life-coaches give to their clients when the client needs to gain perspective in a specific area of his/her life.

I have used this game very successfully with bloggers. You too will be surprised by the variety of answers you will come up with, and after all, bloggers are typically extremely creative.

Many of the bloggers felt it was as if they had looked into a crystal ball and were given a glimpse of their past and present, and a prediction for the future of their blog.

Try this game that will give you a neutral and accurate analysis of your blog, so you know what your next strategic action steps should be to grow your blog more efficiently and faster.

Take a leap of faith—this game is an analytical tool that works!

Here we go: Picture your blog as a rose garden and you are the gardener of this garden.

1. What does your rose garden look like?
2. What are you doing or experiencing as the Gardener?

Depending on what you answered to these important questions, I will then give you some strategies to grow your blog during nature’s seasons.

Do not read further until you type or jot down what specific images you got in your minds-eye when you answered these two questions above.

Let yourself have a stream of consciousness, do not edit your responses. Be detailed, draw a picture if you want, no one sees your answers or picture but you.

Remember, all the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of yesterday.

Now, you can read on—

(1) What does your rose garden look like?

If you answered this question with any of these following answers:

• There are not many rose plants in my garden.
• There are rose plants, but they are not very tall or full with roses.
• The rose plants are withering and/or drooping.
• There are rose plants but not many rose blossoms on them.
• There are rose plants with blossoms, but the blossoms are tightly-closed none of them are open.
• Some of the rose plants look diseased.
• My rose garden seems to be too much in the shade/too much in the sun so it isn’t growing well.

Then my advice to grow your blog is:

It is time to break new ground!

In general, your blog is not growing now.

Cultivate your blog so that it flourishes.

Here are some ways to grow your blog that when done consistently over time yield successful results.

Stats: First you must know what you have planted and monitor its growth. In other words, on a daily basis review your blog/site stats.

The stats reveal to you what steps you must take—what is working to gain interest for your blog from visitors and what traffic and stickiness does your blog have—and what is not working — what you need to work on.

The stats should show you:

• What are the top posts and pages.
• What are the most active posts.
• Who are your referrers (what links were clicked to get to your blog).
• What search engine terms did people use to get to your blog.
• What are your incoming links.
• What links people are clicking on within your blog.
• What are the total views of your blog.
• What are the number of views today of your blog.
• What is the busiest day to-date for your blog.

Content: You need to increase the amount of content you have. From your stats and comments from your visitors you can glean what people visiting your blog resonated with. Whatever that is, do more of it!

And if they are asking for topics in their comments and emails to you that are topics that are appropriate for your blog niche then write those posts too.

You can also check-out the subject of your blog and your blog posts against the “2008 Google Zeitgeist” http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2008/ to read about the highlights of Google searches from around the world, which sheds light on emerging trends and much more.

In addition, “Google Trends” http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends tells you what keywords people are searching for on a daily basis.

Promotion: To increase traffic to your blog I am going to share some steps that for the front-end amount of time you have to put in, the back-end results are very good and effective. Please know that these are just a few, always be on the lookout for way to promote your blog and keep a running list so that you stay accountable for improving your blog’s visibility.

(a) Distribute online videos to multiple sites. Be certain that your Blog name and URL is in the accompanying text description and in the video too of course. I have heard very good feedback on the free service “TubeMogul” http://www.tubemogul.com though at the time of this article pub date I have not personally used it yet.

(b) Submit some of your articles to “Article Directories”, also called “Article Banks.” If you Google the term you will find lists of such sites. There is even software available nowadays that you can use that help in the submission process. Do some due diligence before buying any software first though, you may decide to do it manually.

(c) Look for automatic ways for promotion that work while you sleep. One example is creating a page for your and your blog on “Facebook” http://www.Facebook.com and import your blog posts as notes. You will see the “how-to” behind this once you are a Facebook member.

(2) What are you doing or experiencing as the Gardener?

If you answered this question with any of these following answers:

• When I walk through my rose garden, it seems that there are thorns everywhere.
• When I walk through my rose garden, all I see are weeds, they appear to be strangling my roses.
• Too many leaves are falling of the rose plants, I don’t know what is wrong.
• The roses are growing so quickly I can’t keep up with their care.
• The weather forecast looks bad for my rose garden.
• I work the soil of my rose garden all the time and take great care of my roses constantly.
• I don’t know what variety of roses to grow, or what colors.
• I am not sure how much to water my rose garden.
• I am not sure how much sunshine my rose garden needs.
• I am unhappy with how my garden looks. Maybe it needs more variety of rose plants, or more colorful rose plants.

Then my advice to grow your blog is:

Be land-rich not poor as dirt!

Overall, you are probably a little overwhelmed with the demands and upkeep of running a blog. If your blog is monetized, then you have a business. And grooming a business for success is no easy task.

As the saying goes, you are digging yourself into a hole. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the turn-of-phrase).

You need to take a pause, a breather—not only to re-energize your self, but also to have a chance to re-evaluate the direction your blog is going.

If you are moving at warp speed there is no way you are making clear decisions, and you may be wasting a lot of time on tasks that are not top priority, that is the slow way to grow a blog, and the slow way to wealth of any type.

To that, you will probably say “I can’t even take ½ hour off today Mara—there is too much to do!”

Yes, I know, there is always so much to do with a blog, but you are now on a path to what I call a “blog-oholic” and if you continue at this pace you will have ‘burnout’ from overworking.

You must avoid this! Achieving work-balance is tough especially in this creative, and ever-changing field.

Here are some pointers to keep your sanity, avoid stress and have fun and success while you grow your blog successfully:

• Systemize: Create systems for as much as possible to reduce your workload. At http://www.SecretsForMoney.info I try to implement as many automated systems as possible. Not just the obvious such as an Autoresponder, but also for smaller tasks. One of many examples is that I wanted all my blog titles to be in green colored ink. Now that facet is automated. This saves countless hours for the infinite lifespan of my blog, I don’t have to type in color code for each blog post title. Maybe doing this manually only takes 1 minute, but if you multiply that by the number of posts…I just saved a tremendous amount of my precious time. And my time cannot be replaced.
• Partner: You may feel married to your blog, but you can also partner with other bloggers so that you are not the only Author on your site/blog. This will create more time for you, not to mention open-up more opportunities.
• Prioritize: Label your tasks, but only a few realistic tasks per day, so that you always feel that you accomplished something. Then bask in the victory of that.
• Gain Perspective: Listen to your own “pace”—schedule what days and which hours you will work, do so in smaller chunks of time. Such as Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 2 hours each day to just write posts. Then schedule time for blog maintenance, administration etc.

But make sure to also schedule relaxing time to do what else you love to do, such as a power walk outside or a jog to clear your mind, rejuvenate and gain perspective.

It is a fact that the more relaxed a person is the more creative and productive they can be, and of course happier.

Cultivate the garden within my friends.

So there you have it blog-gardeners, you have already put down the roots, now it is time for you to bloom too!

Happy planting!

Copyright © 2009 by Mara Rogers of http://www.SecretsForMoney.info

Mara Rogers is the Founder of http://www.SecretsForMoney.info where your capacity for all the wealth currencies: money, time, health, and love is increased through Secret For Money’s personal development and financial articles. Subscribe to the free Secrets For Money blog at http://www.SecretsForMoney.info

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This question hit my inbox earlier today and I thought I’d repost part of my reply here as I think it could be relevant to more than the blogger concerned. Here’s most of my response (I’ve removed reference to the blog concerned as I don’t have permission from the blogger to identify it):

Congratulations on the success you’ve had with your blog. It is great that you’ve hung in there for two years now with the blog and grown it as much as you have. It sounds like you’ve worked hard to find your voice, build a core community and establish some profile and credibility in your niche.

One thought that came to mind regarding your question was that perhaps you need to widen your sites a little. While it does seem that you’re the number 1 blog in your niche (I can’t find any on your topic on Technorati with a ranking as high as yours) you are certainly not the number 1 site on the internet on your topic.

Many bloggers only see their competition as other blogs on their topic and in doing so ignore other types of websites in their niche. For example when I search on Google for your topic I find 3 forums, one social media site and a couple of other static/informational websites that not only rank higher in Google for your keywords but which seem to do significantly more traffic than your blog (according to Alexa and Compete’s stats).

I don’t say this to discourage you but in the hope that in widening your sites about your ‘competition’ that you’ll be driven on to think bigger and improve your blog.

Some practical words of advice for you are to see what opportunities there are to interact in these other websites in your niche. I know you are active in commenting on and networking with other blogs in your niche but what about getting involved in the forums, contacting the other website owners and getting active in the social networking site?

You’ve grown your blog to the point you have partly by the networking and promotion you’ve done within the blogging community - but think broader and you might just find yourself not only being the number 1 blog on your topic but being the number 1 website of all types.

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Everyday it seems like I find a story or two from a cities local online newspaper which delves into the topic of blogging and what it’s all about. The story usually goes through a mini backlog of history surrounding the term, what blogging is and at the end of the article, there is usually a list of suggestions on how to get started with the most popular suggestion being WordPress.com. Using WordPress.com is a great way to introduce yourself to blogging but if you decide that you want to turn blogging into a full time job or just want more control over your work, you’ll need to move.

Thankfully, the move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (WordPress.org being the self hosted version of WordPress) is painless thanks in large part to a great export tool.

To start things off, login to your WordPress.com account and browse to your administration panel. From the menu on the left, click on TOOLS - EXPORT. At this point, you have the option to confine the export to a particular author or all authors. Using the export tool will compile your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags. This information is placed into a WXR file or, WordPress eXtended RSS file. Essentially, this file is just a normal XML RSS based file with a couple of custom fields added to it which makes it specific to WordPress. Once you’re finished, click on the Download Export File button and save it to your desktop.

Once you have that file on your desktop, you can breath a little easier considering your half way through the content migration process.

The second part of this guide refers to an installation of WordPress 2.7. Login to your self installed WordPress administration panel and from the menu on the left click on TOOLS - IMPORT. From the list of blogging systems click on WordPress. Next, click on the Browse button and locate the XML file you downloaded earlier. This will upload the XML file into your WordPress installation and will unpack all of the data the file contains. There is one caveat though regarding this entire technique.

Most webhosts for whatever reason still have their PHP.ini configured in such a way where end users can only upload files with a maximum file size of 2MB or smaller. Although it takes quite a bit of content in an WXR file to go over 2MB, 2MB is not a lot of head room. If you find yourself in the position where your WXR file is larger than the maximum file size, I highly suggest submitting a trouble ticket to your webhost and asking them to increase the limit. If they choose not to, then ask them if they can import the file for you. If that doesn’t work, you can pull a trick from your sleeve by uploading a custom php.ini file to your webhosting accounts root folder. This is what my host did for me and afterwards, I took a look at the php.ini file and noticed it had this line in it:

; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.
upload_max_filesize = 7M

Apparently, the php.ini file overwrote the settings on the original file and I was able to bump my limit up to 7 Megabytes. This trick is not guaranteed to work. As a last ditch effort, you can also try adding these lines to your .htaccess file. Just replace the pound sign with a number that is above the size of your WXR file.

#set max upload file size
php_value upload_max_filesize #M

#set max post size
php_value post_max_size #M

Once the WXR file is unpacked on your self installed version of WordPress, you’re ready to walk through the gates of freedom without skipping a beat!

P.S. This strategy also works for those wanting to go from WordPress.org to WordPress.com.

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“You worry about names. You think long and hard about titles. You put boxes around what you’re doing, if that suits you.

I’ll be over here just doing. Thinking, planning, doing, and observing my results.”

I’m always amazed by the debate and chatter that can at times surround blogging (and social media). Who’s doing it right and who’s doing it wrong, what is legitimate and what isn’t….

While there is a need for us as a community to talk, debate, reflect, label and define - the smart ones among us area also ‘doing’.

What do you think?

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This is an annual poll that we’ve run for a number of years now so it is always interesting to see the results.

As usual - the poll revealed that most bloggers either don’t try to make money blogging or earn very little from their blogs but also that a smaller (but still significant) number of bloggers are making at least a part time living from the medium and a few bloggers beyond what most of us would consider ‘full time’.

Of course this is not a scientific poll and it relies upon people interpreting the question correctly and voting honestly - I’m certain that there are inaccuracies in it (particularly with some voting in the top category just for ‘fun’) but the results are actually quite similar to previous years which does make me think that there is at least some level of truth to them.

Take it or leave it - here are the results of this year’s earning poll:

• 37% of those who voted said that they do not make money from their blogs. This category would include both those who don’t want to make money blogging, those who didn’t realize that it was possible, those who don’t have a blog and those who have tried but failed to make money blogging.

While this is a significant and important result I’ve removed category from the charts below so that we can concentrate just on those who make at least some money from their blog.

• 1162 people said that they make under $10 a month. This is a total of 29% of those who make money blogging. This category was 26% in 2007 and 30% in 2006.
• 477 people made between $10-$29 in the month (12%)
• 505 people made between $30-$99 (12%)
• 686 made $100 - $499 over the month (17%)

So to this point we can say 70% of those who make money from their blogs make less than $500 a month and 30% make $500 or more.

• 262 made $500 - $999 (6%)
• 150 made $1,000 - $1,499 (4%)
• 128 made $1,500 - $2,499 (3%)
• 130 made $2,500 - $4,999 (3%)
• 95 made $5,000 - $9,999 (2%)
• 45 made $10,000 - $14,999 (1%)
• 35 made $15,000 - $19,999 (1)
• 373 made $20,000 or more (9%).

The top category probably has some skewing but has always been in this vicinity (9% in 2007 and 7% in 2006 - although in these years the top category was $15,000+). While I’m sure there is some skewing here it is an open ended category so we could expect it to have people earning not only $20,000 a month but also those earning quite a bit more (of which I’m aware of quite a few).

Here’s another chart with the same information:

Once again these figures hammer home to anyone wanting to get into blogging for money that it is not a foregone conclusion that you’ll make a lot of money from the medium. It is possible to make at least a part time income from blogging and for some to make quite a bit of money from it - but over half are earning less than $3 a day (or $100 a month).

For those interested in the comparisons to previous years - let me finish with charts from 2006 and 2007. First here are the 2006 results:

And now the 2007 results:

As you’ll see the results are remarkably similar from year to year although each year we’ve done it the sample size has grown.

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As we move into 2008 I thought it might be fun to look back quickly on the year that was with a top 10 post of the most popular posts published on ProBlogger this year (according to page views on Google Analytics).

1. 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider
2. 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky
3. From 10000 to 0 Emails in an Inbox in 24 Hours
4. 13 Ways to Add New Dimensions to Your Next Post
5. 14 Essential Mac OS X Applications for Bloggers
6. 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers
7. How I Make Money Blogging - My Top Income Streams Update
8. How I’d Promote My Blog If I Were Starting Out Again
9. 7 Types of Blog Posts Which Always Seem to Get Links and Traffic
10. How to Craft a Blog Post - 10 Crucial Points to Pause

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While looking forward and planning to improve your blog is something well worth putting time aside for - I’ve found that you can drastically enhance the forward thinking that you do by doing another step first - reflecting upon the past.

The mistake that many bloggers make in only looking forward is that they often fail to capitalize upon and build upon lessons that they’ve already learned.

An Example

I spoke with one blogger this morning who I think illustrates this perfectly. I won’t name him as I don’t want to cause embarrassment but he emailed me to tell me about how he was about to completely relaunch his blog in the coming days. He’d put up a holding page where his old blog had been, was going to launch a completely new design with new branding, he was changing the name and tag line of the blog, was going to change his posting frequency from 3 posts a day to 2-3 posts a week and most strikingly was changing the topic of his blog quite significantly.

When I emailed the blogger back to ask his reasoning for the drastic change of his blog he responded by saying that ‘it’s time for a change’. He reflected that he thought his readers might be bored and he himself wanted a change. His reasons didn’t go much beyond this.

Now don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with reinvention and changing course with your blog - what this blogger is doing could be a very smart move - but a smarter move would be to do a little reflection on how his blog had been going, identifying what was working and what wasn’t and building upon the good stuff - instead of effectively knocking it all down and rebuilding on the rubble.

How to Reflect on the Progress of your Blog

So how does one reflect upon the past experience of their blog in order to work out how to evolve it and build upon its strengths to go forward?

Below I’ve begun to develop a list of questions that a blogger wanting to do some reflection upon their blog might use to undertake such an exercise. By no means is this list exhaustive and by no means am I suggesting that bloggers ask each one - some will be more relevant than others depending upon the blog, its stage in the life cycle and the goals of the blogger.

I would recommend bloggers wanting to do this type of reflection set aside at least a few hours to do this exercise (or a series of hour long sessions over a few days). That might sound like a lot of time but the lessons that you learn by doing this could make any planning you might do for 2009 and beyond much more effective. For some of these questions you will probably need access to your blogs metrics/stats package but for many you might find it less distracting if you were offline with a pen and paper.

General Questions

1. What goals (formal or informal) did you have for your blog in 2008?
2. What goals did you meet?
3. What successes did you have that you didn’t set goals for?
4. Which goals didn’t you meet for your blog in 2008?
5. What failed on your blog in 2008? What mistakes did you make?
6. How have you innovated in 2008?
7. How have you invested in your own learning as a blogger in 2008?
8. What do you want readers of your blog to ‘DO’ after reading your blog?
9. Do Your Readers actually Do what you want them to do?
10. Would YOU read your blog?

Traffic

1. How did your traffic change in 2008?
2. What was the biggest source of traffic in 2008? Why was it big?
3. What types of traffic didn’t grow in 2008?
4. Take some time to analyze traffic sources including search engines, social bookmarking, other referring sites, direct traffic - are they trending up or down?
5. Where did you promote your blog in 2008?
6. Did the promotion pay off?
7. What search terms are people typing into Google to arrive on your site?
8. What seasonal traffic was their in 2008?
9. How many pages were people viewing on your site per visit?
10. How much time did you put into building traffic, promotion, marketing, SEO in 2008?

Content

1. How many posts did you write over the year?
2. Which months did you write the most posts and which did you write the least? Why the ups and downs?
3. Which posts had the most traffic in 2009? Why do you think that was?
4. Which posts got the most comments? Why might that have been?
5. Which posts were linked to most by other sites?
6. What topics most energized you in 2008?
7. Which posts drained you most?
8. What type of posts have you been writing lately (voice, style etc)? How long are they?
9. How much time did you put into writing content in 2008?
10. Are key pages (About page, Contact page, Advertise page etc) up to date?
11. What calls to action did you have on your blog in 2008? Did they work?
12. What ‘need’ does your content fulfill for readers? What problems does it solve?

Community

1. What recurring questions did readers ask in 2008?
2. How have your RSS subscriber numbers changed?
3. If you have a newsletter - how are subscriber numbers to it changing?
4. Are comment numbers from readers increasing or decreasing?
5. How much personal interaction did you have with readers in 2008?
6. What other ways are readers interacting with your blog? (polls, guest posts, forums etc)
7. Have you kept up with moderating comment spam in 2008?

Your Niche

1. Is your niche/topic/industry growing or shrinking?
2. What topics within or around your niche are growing and gaining momentum?
3. What are other blogs doing well in your niche?
4. Are they growing or shrinking in terms of traffic and reader engagement?
5. What are other blogs in your niche ignoring or doing badly?
6. How were your interactions with other bloggers this year?
7. What social media sites, forums or other types of sites are ‘hot’ in your niche?
8. Does your niche/topic energize you?

Design

1. How does your blogs design look?
2. Is it dated, confusing or ‘broken’ or is it attractive, functional and engaging?
3. Is there clutter anywhere on your blog?
4. Does your blog load fast?
5. When a first time reader arrives on their blog what impression would they get?
6. Would a first time visitor immediately know what it is about and how to use/navigate it?
7. What complaints have you heard most about your design from readers this year?

Monetization (if this is a goal for you)

1. How much did your blog earn in 2008?
2. Are your earnings up or down on previous years?
3. What sources of income does your blog have?
4. How did your income change over the year? Why did it change?
5. What lessons did you learn about what methods of making money works best on your blog?
6. What didn’t work in 2008 when it comes to monetization?
7. What are other blogs and sites in your niche using to monetize their blogs? What affiliate products are they promoting? What ad networks are they using?
8. What advertisers are running campaigns in your niche?
9. What type of affiliate programs have worked (and not worked) on your blog? What type of offers do you readers respond to?

Technical

1. Is your blog platform up to date?
2. What features/widgets/tools are readers using on your blog?
3. What features/widgets/tools are readers not using on your blog?
4. When was the last time you backed up your blog?
5. Is your hosting sufficient for your blog? How much downtime did you have in 2008?
6. What features do your readers ask for or complain about on your blog?

OK - as I say above - these questions just scratch the surface as to the type of reflections that a blogger might do on their blog. I’d love to hear other questions that you’d also ask.

Next week, after you’ve had a little time to do some of this reflecting, I want to follow this post up by outlining a process that I use for planning and coming up with strategies for a blog. Stay tuned to the ProBlogger RSS feed to get this update.

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So you haven’t quite monetized your blog. That means you’re still working 8 or so hours in the non-virtual world for that paycheck. You may also have many other time commitments. They are called marriage, parenthood, friendships and Twitter.

With all of these variables vying for the same 24 hours, how do you follow Darren’s advice and blog at least every day?

You have a few choices.

1. You could stop sleeping.
2. You could give up the family and friends.
3. You could learn how to write really fast.

If you’re tempted by option #2, I can’t help you, but I wish you the best of luck with that. If you want to know more about option #3, keep reading.

I first learned how to write fast when I was on deadline as a newspaper reporter. I, at times, had just ten or so minutes to crank out at least 800 words. These days I blog 4 to 5 times a week at projecthappilyeverafter.com, twice a week at Capessa.com and two more times a week at savorthesuccess.com. I also write guest blogs and magazine articles, and I ghost and co-author books.

All told, I’m typing somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 words a week. Yet, I spend only 6 to 7 daily hours in my desk chair. Over the years I’ve developed this 6-step system for writing fast.

Step 1: Know what you want to say before you sit down. As soon as you finish any blog, start thinking about your next one. Think it over as you walk the dog, while washing dishes, or even while staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m. What will it be about? What do you have to say? Go over lines in your head. For instance, at 3 a.m. last night, I heard the line, “Throw up on the screen.” You’ll hear it again, too. Real soon. Promise.

Step 2: Pick the basic format you will use to organize your blog. Most blogs fall into one of the following organizational templates:

• Q & A – Someone poses a question and then you answer it.
• Tips: You start with a couple paragraphs of explanation followed by a list of tips. This “how to write fast” blog follows this format, only the “tips” are “steps.”
• Story: Once upon a time something happened to me, I learned someone from it, and now we’re at the end.
• List: This might be a list of great websites, great books, or great people to follow on Twitter.
• Quiz or Test: You pose a series of questions or offer a check off list that allows the reader to figure something out.

There are other formats, too, but the key to writing fast is knowing and perfecting a few. That way you can create them quickly and easily.

Step 3: Throw up on the screen. (Told you.) Start writing and don’t stop until there are no words left in your head. Don’t stop for typos. Don’t stop for grammar. Don’t stop because you lose your train of thought. Insert quick notes as you write, such as CHECK NAME SPELLING, FIND URL, or WHAT IS THE WORD I WANT HERE? I use that last one quite frequently.

Step 4: Read your blog from beginning to end. Fill in holes. Tinker. Replace your all caps notes with real text.

Step 5: Read out loud once or twice. This will help you catch typos, pinpoint really awkward writing, and help you tighten things up.

Step 6: You’re done. Post it.

I just followed these steps for this article. So far I’ve been writing for 10 minutes.

What’s your best advice for speeding up the writing process? Leave a comment.

Alisa Bowman writes about the ups and downs of marriage at projecthappilyeverafter.com. She’s also the relationships editor at Capessa.com. Follow her on Twitter @alisabow.

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At the time of writing this, there has been 34 comments to my Create A Media Kit To Attract Advertisers To Your Blog guest post at ProBlogger.net. One of the good things about getting a guest post spot at a bigger blog is that the number of comments is larger as well.

Getting higher number of comments from your targeted audience allows you to learn more about them, what they think about your writing, what questions did you raise in their minds and what answers they are looking for. This can give you inspiration on what you can write about in your future blog posts.

Some of the comments on my guest post at ProBlogger give an idea on what readers are interested to learn about. I can see ideas for two new blog posts after reading the following comments:

When is my blog ready to start attracting advertisers?

1. “100% agree with you Darren, but the point when shall i create one? my blog is couple of days old yet, i think i need to raise it and then create a Media Kit & a Rate Card for it, right? what do you think?”

2. “I’m wondering what level of traffic should you have on a monthly visit before you attempt to sell advertising space?”

How do I know how much I should charge for my advertising space?

1. “It would be good to have some discussion about ad rates vs. traffic to help us neophytes figure out how much we can reasonably charge and yet not undercharge. For example, if you’re getting about 3,000 page visits a month, what is the market rate range for particular size ads?”

2. “Is there any place that one might find some practical amounts to charge per traffic rate? I know that is hard to answer with specifics, but ball park numbers are what I had in mind.”

3. “One thing that I’m quite confused is how to start the initial ad rates so that I can get more advertisers interested to put their ad in my blog?”

So the question is, do you have any knowledge on when it is a right time for a new blog to start contacting potential blog advertisers? Or how much should a blogger charge for the advertising space, how should the calculation be made so it doesn’t undersell nor oversell the blog?

Good thing about getting inspired for post topics with this method, is that you know that your audience is interested in learning more about it and you know that there is a demand for it. This will help you as there is a potential of your blog post to spread virally as readers will recommend you to others if you answer their questions and help them out.

Find questions that you target audience asks in your blog or in the similar blogs and start writing posts on topics inspired by reader comments. Do them as best as you can, publish them on your blog or try to get a guest post spot at a bigger blog in your field and see your blog traffic and RSS subscribers grow.

PS from Darren: for those interested in the above two topics there are a few posts in the ProBlogger archives that cover them. Check out:

• How Much Traffic Should a Blog Have Before Running Advertising?
• When Should I Put Advertising on My Blog?
• How Much Should I Charge for My Advertising Space?

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WordPress 2.7 codename “Coltrane” has been released earlier in December 2008, with the most significant change being the new Dashboard interface. A lot of people upgrade immediately, but a few others are still hesitant for one reason or another, as seen in the various blogging forums, including the WordPress Support Forums.

The rule of thumb is simple. You should upgrade as soon as time permits.

Not only because this version includes a bunch of new features and security updates, but also the fact that new versions will make future upgrades easier and painless with auto-upgrade and compatibility with newer versions of PHP and MySQL.

However, many people haven’t yet taken the time to upgrade because of a few concerns:

1. Compatibility with installed theme and plugins. Most themes work out of the box with WordPress 2.7, with a few exception for themes that include custom queries to sticky posts and a few minor and easy-to-fix issue. (Well, if you are a theme developer who have access to a friend who are in the know, that would be quick to fix.)
2. Lack of technical ability to upgrade. WordPress Codex includes a standard 3-step and extended upgrading processes. Even easier if your hosting includes cPanel, an upgrade is available through Fantastico — assuming that you install the previous version through it and your host has installed a new version of Fantastico.
3. WordPress upgrades happen too often. Due to security issues and others, sometimes it is necessary to revise and update the code. If you resist upgrading to 2.7 because of this reason, there is a good news. This is perhaps the last upgrade you must do manually. The auto-upgrade feature makes the process easier after 2.7.

If you are more convenient with minor upgrade, you should at least make sure that you are running version 2.6.5 because it provides security updates for the latest release of WordPress.

However, it is important to remember that future upgrades will be harder if you are behind a few major releases. The development resources are now focusing on the 2.7 branch and future release (2.8), so if you want to enjoy new releases and features, upgrade is necessary.

How to Upgrade to WordPress 2.7 Directly

Upgrading a major release is better done through a step-by-step process. With a minor release, you can go from 2.6.2 to 2.6.5 without a problem, but with a major upgrade it is not recommended to go straight from 2.7 from 2.3, for example.

Most people upgraded from 2.6.x to WordPress 2.7 without a problem, but just to be on the safe side, you should check to make sure that your web hosting provider is compatible. As you notice, most popular hosting providers have already supported the new release.

Although it is worth mentioning that WordPress 2.7 still supports PHP4 at the moment, it may discontinue that at some point, mostly because PHP4 is no longer being updated.

If running particular theme and plugins are compulsory, check the 2.7 Plugin Compatibility and 2.7 Theme Compatibility

Finally, once you are ready, follow the steps in the WordPress Codex, either in the standard or extended upgrade page to proceed. The latter is preferable if you have used plugins beyond the ones that come with WordPress installation.

What If You’re Still Unsure

For bloggers and web publishers who use WordPress in busy sites, it is understandable when they hesitate to perform an upgrade because just a minor glitch usually means frustrating their users and losing revenue.

Certainly this is not desirable.

For people who customize WordPress heavily, the thought of losing all the hard work or have to do it all over again certainly hold them back.

If you can relate to one of the above situations, there are still ways you can upgrade confidently. The answer lies is testing.

While it involves more work, it also gives you peace of mind during the whole upgrade process. Remember as said earlier, this may be the last time you have to go through this process manually.

After you’ve gone through the whole thing, you may realize that even with the manual process, it is not as hard as you might imagine.

If nothing else, these upgrades allow you to create a testing platform for experimenting. If you are a theme developer or tester, or if you are developing WordPress plugins, you will be able to test them with a production-like environment with real data, complete plugins and your own theme.

Finally, in the worst case, you have to migrate your plugins or existing theme to make them compatible with WordPress 2.7 or disable the plugins until upgraded versions are available. But of course, you can choose to not upgrade if you want to make sure everything runs smoothly in 2.7 before you upgrade.

You can even speed up the process plugin migration process — but avoid pushing as the authors may do this for free — by encouraging the plugin developers to update their plugins. If enough people want the support, most likely it will happen, unless the developers don’t plan to continue the development again, for which you should start seeking an alternative or even take over the project.

Migrating to WordPress 2.7 Safely — The Plan

So, what’s the alternative plan(s) I am talking about?

It is a safe way to migrate your WordPress installation by making sure all of your plugins and installed theme work.

This method involves installing a separate copy of WordPress 2.7 in a test environment, load all the plugins and theme, including your blog posts and comments into it. Before you actually decide that the new version of WordPress works flawlessly for your site, you attempt your best to break it.

After all, it is better to find out if something breaks first during testing rather than having your visitors fall into it unintentionally.

Once you are happy with it, make the transition quickly. It is possible to do it without any down time at all. Well, perhaps a few seconds at most.

If that sounds too techie, perhaps you are true. I can’t change your perception but practically it is not hard at all. As long as you follow the steps below carefully, and you execute the plan only after you understand the whole process, you’d be surprised that you could do that too.

With a bit of background prepared, now it’s time for the exciting part.

1. Create a Copy of Your WordPress Installation

The good thing about open source software is that it is free. You can create a new WordPress blog in a few minutes, whenever and wherever you want it, with one of these scenarios:

1. Install WordPress 2.7 in a directory under your existing blog. If your blog is hosted under example.com, it is possible to create another directory such as example.com/wp27 and make it as if it is another copy of example.com.
2. Install WordPress 2.7 in a new domain. Just like the above scenario, but you can replicate the whole structure, even the directory under the domain, to match the main blog. Of course, the only difference in this backup blog is the domain name.
3. Install WordPress 2.7 locally. There are a few ways to do this, either install it as a service running under your desktop operating system (Windows) using Apache or various alternative and lightweight web servers like nginx or lighttpd.

I’ve created an experimental WordPress virtual appliance called WP-Sandbox. It allows you to run a web server on a virtual machine quickly, using VMware Player. It is still in a very early stage of development. Currently, as of this writing, I have already spotted a few bugs so expect an upgrade soon.

Important: Rather than pointing the backup WordPress 2.7 installation to use existing database, you should backup your database and import it to a newly created database. If you have limited number of allowed database in your web hosting account, either install it locally or modify it to install in the same database but with a different prefix.

This upgrade of WordPress requires you to upgrade the database. By pointing it to a new / backup database, you avoid modifying the production data.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand what I’m talking about above. Just pick one that fits you well and go with it.

WP-DB-Backup is an excellent plugin for backing up a database. Follow the instructions at WordPress Codex for more alternatives, including using phpMyAdmin and straight MySQL commands.

Once you have the WordPress 2.7 code ready in the new location — including the edited configuration file (wp-config.php), export your existing data and import / restore it to the new database, you are ready for the next step.

I almost forget. Add the following lines to wp-config.php:

define('WP_HOME', 'http://example.com/wp27');
define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://example.com/wp27');

This saves you from modifying the database options.

2. Copy All Plugins and Active Theme

In this step, you are going to prepare the new WordPress 2.7 installation to resemble your existing blog as close as possible, but the most important things are plugins and theme. Copy the whole wp-content/plugins directory and your activated theme in wp-content/themes to the new WordPress directories, except that you don’t want to overwrite akismet and hello.php (the latter is just an example WordPress plugin showing random line of lyric from the song Hello, Dolly).

WordPress centralizes content in the wp-content directory. Unless you change the uploaded media to another place, it should be in wp-content/uploads. Duplicate the whole directory and sub-directories to your new WordPress if you can afford the disk space.

At this stage, you’ve already created an exact same copy of your WordPress blog, except that the backup blog is run under the shiny new version 2.7.

Unless you have other directories or files hosted under the domain in other directories, you are done with this step. It is recommended that you copy those complete directory structures over to the new blog. In the process, make sure you don’t overwrite any new WordPress core files.

You may also use your web hosting control panel to perform the duplication. FTP (or SFTP - secure ftp) is also common if you want to transfer files from remote (server) to local and vice versa. If you know basic Linux command line, you should be able to duplicate your data very quickly.

Note: Don’t forget the .htaccess, robots.txt, sitemap.xml, favicon.ico and other files as well.

3. Test, test and test

Now that you’ve created a complete backup of your blog in WordPress 2.7, now is the time to break it. I mean, do what you can to explore your blog just like a visitor would do. Pay attention to details and see if something breaks in 2.7 but not in the previous version of WordPress.

Ask a friend or colleague to test it for you, as others will often spot things that you fail to notice.

If you install various plug-ins that inject codes into your themes but are not visible on the screen, such as the meta keyword and description tags plugin, check to make sure they are all working properly.

Don’t rush through this process. Just because it looks well doesn’t mean there is no problem. Remember that at first most people didn’t want to upgrade because of the concern that it may not work for their blogs, so be a bit paranoid and test thoroughly.

4. Finalize installation on production server

After you’re satisfied with it, and most likely you will, you may want to do the upgrade process once again, but now targeting the production blog.

Here are some tips that let you minimize the down time. This method may not be suitable for everyone especially if your blog hosts a huge number of huge files but at the very least you can take some ideas and use them to make the migration process as smooth as possible.

1. Extract or upload a copy of WordPress 2.7 to a new directory at the same level as the production blog. For instance, if your blog is at example.com/blog, extract a copy of WordPress 2.7 to example.com/wp27.
2. Duplicate the whole data just like what you do in step 2 above. Use your favorite tool to do that, as long as it works for you. Most importantly, retain all the permissions of the files and directories so everything works after the migration process. Note that you don’t have to change the wp-config.php configuration variables like above because you want to upgrade your production database now. (You already have a backup copy of the database, right?)
3. Double check if everything is already in place.
4. Copy the directory of the production blog to something else, such as blog-2.6, and immediately after that, copy the wp27 directory to blog. If you are on Linux command line, you may do this on one line so it happens in a fraction of a second.
5. Run the upgrade script, which is example.com/blog/wp-admin/upgrade.php, to continue with the above example. Follow the instructions on the screen and you are done.

Now perform extensive tests again on your production blog to make sure everything go smoothly.

If you have huge files that you don’t copy over from the old blog, now move them from the blog-2.6 directory to blog, which is now your WordPress 2.7 blog. WordPress 2.7 introduces a new contant NONCE_KEY in wp-config.php. For added security, you should complete all those keys if you haven’t. Replace the wp-config-sample.php to reflect your blog database and other parameters, and overwrite wp-config.php (backup first).

With the above method, notice that I didn’t take down the blog, put up maintenance message or use any plugin of that kind. Also if you have extra space to play with, this method is actually faster than replacing the WordPress file