What this means for our readers:
All articles, including new ones moving forward, will be published at FreelancerMagazine.com. Please update your RSS readers - Freelancer Magazine RSS Feed - and bookmarks accordingly to continue receiving content.

Not only will you continue to receive articles geared toward bloggers, but a wider range of articles devoted to helping independent workers better manage all functions of their businesses and work-life balance. Here is a sampling of articles you will find at the new NxE / FM:

• 9 Brilliantly Designed Portfolio Websites
• 6 Alternative Workspaces to the Home Office
• 10 Places to Sell Your Work Online
• Useful Tips and Tricks for Freelancers
• The Freelancer Pricing Conundrum
• Time Management and Efficiency: The Key to a Successful Career

We appreciate your past and continued readership, and hope to provide some great resources for you moving forward! Feel free to comment on the new site, or add suggestions for types of content you’d like to see.

Cheers,
John Cottone
NorthxEast.com, FreelancerMagazine.com

But there is an easier way to get to talk to hard core bloggers and learn from them: Look into the nearby future and say hi to the star bloggers of tomorrow. That is, bloggers who are doing a great job building their blogs today but aren’t yet overwhelmed with contact requests, email and other PR duties.

But who are the rising stars, then?

To make things easier for you, I did a quick study and collected a group of inspiring bloggers who are on their way to building something big. Here’s how the study was organized:

1. I sent out an email message to some bloggers I concider elite citizens of the blogosphere and asked them to point out one to five rising stars who they think are still not too hip to stay in touch with regular people like you and me.
2. Then, I went through their recommendations and picked a handful of interesting bloggers. I contacted them to see how they would respond and asked each of them two interview questions regarding their blogging.
3. Finally, I asked each blogger interviewed if they wanted to point out a few more rising stars, and repeated from step 2.

The list I’m about to present you is by no means a complete one. Not even a particularly wide selection of all the upcoming star bloggers out there. But nevertheless, these nine people will surely change the face of blogging in no time, so you’d better get to know them now instead of later.

And even more importantly, I’m sure you want to hear what they have to say about their blogging success and the challenges they are facing so that you can be one of them!

Tina Su

Tina Su blogs about finding clarity, simplicity, creativity and personal happiness at Think Simple Now. Although she started her blog less than a year ago, it has already collected a big audience, and an RSS following of over 7000 subscribers (Not to mention the huge number of Diggs here posts generate!). But this is just the beginning: Tina’s friendly voice and practical approach to her topics are keys to still many more happy readers to come.

Here’s what she answered to my interview questions:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

1. Knowing specifically what my goals are and why. Making sure my goals were measurable.
2. Having absolute faith that I was going to reach my goals.
3. Dedicating myself to producing the best content possible.
4. Telling everyone about it.
5. Helping other bloggers whenever I can.
6. Once I reach my immediate blogging goals, I set new ones. Typically, I re-visit my goals at the start of each month to evaluate my progress and to set new ones. I’ve written about this topic extensively at ProBlogger: From 0 to 2000+ Subscribers in 90 Days

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

The web is an incredible platform for reaching out to people of diverse culture around the world. At the core of what we do, our most basic motives and emotions are universal. We are all human. We all want the same thing: happiness.

I see this platform as an empowering tool to spreading messages that can increase the quality of people’s lives, regardless of cultural background. The opportunities are boundless.

A handful of powerful posts written by Tina Su:

1. I’m Sorry, I Don’t Know, I Can’t …
2. 20 Ways to Attack Shyness
3. How to Make Profound and Lasting Change
4. The Mini-Retirement Misconception
5. Stuff-onomics: Hidden Side of What You Own

Nick Cernis

Nick Cernis is a web designer turned entrepreneur with a nearly-magical touch with words. He blogs about productivity and living the lives we love at Put Things Off and is the author of the masterful eBook on paper based productivity, Todoodlist.

As you can see from his interview answers, this guy is definitely up to something big in the near future:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

I don’t consider myself particularly famous. I’ve just worked hard at something I love. I think to chase after fame or some other dangling carrot directly would be disastrous. Fame and success should always be secondary; do something you adore and do it with passion — the recognition will follow.

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

I plan to write a book, if not this year, then soon. After that, I’d like to do more video work; not the monologue-to-webcam kind, but the storytelling kind that reaches out and touches people. I think there’s scope to extend what I try to do with my writing — to make people think about their lives — but to do it on film in a light-hearted, mockumentary style that’s more accessible than traditional productivity and lifestyle advice.

Five strong posts from Nick Cernis’s portfolio:

1. OFFCON: The Office Terror Alert
2. Wordprezzie and The One Month Launch
3. The Challenge: Read One Book a Week
4. Inbox Heaven
5. Moleskine Notebooks: The Ultimate Guide

Steven Snell

Steven Snell is a designer balancing his time between graphics, writing and entrepreneurship. He runs three blogs, including design blogs Vandelay Design Blog and the (just started) Designm.ag, but is also one of the most active contributors at the blogging and entrepreneurship blog Blogtrepreneur.

Steven attributes his success to being active in social media and a putting in a consistent effort:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

What I have been able to achieve has primarily been the result of consistent effort. I’ve been building my blog pretty aggressively for just over a year now and through that time I’ve come from knowing next to nothing about blogging to building a decent-sized audience in a competitive niche. Most of the other bloggers that I interacted with during my first few months either completely stopped posting or they fizzled out and occasionally post something, but with no consistency. I’ve been eager to learn and willing to try new things while I’ve watched other blogs that have more potential than mine just get bored. That’s fine; no one should have to build a blog if they don’t want to. A lot of people say they’re committed to doing something special, but when it comes down to it, they’re not willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Most of us are building blogs part-time, so sacrifices are inevitable.

In terms of specific strategies and keys to growth, two things really stand out to me - content and networking. I know I’ve written my share of horrible posts, but I’m always trying to improve and create something that will generate interest. Over the course of a year I think I’ve been able to improve the quality of my content and really narrow the focus of my posts to match what most of my readers want to see. Networking is something that I never really gave much consideration to when I started blogging. I had no idea how powerful it would be. I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know some great bloggers that have really helped me out along the way.

Other things that have been huge for me include guest posts / freelance writing at other blogs and social media. Social media is actually what first got me excited about blogging and made me see the true potential.

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

My biggest challenge right now is deciding exactly what to pursue.

I currently have three blogs of my own. One is more of a side project that gets only a few hours per week of attention, and another one was just launched less than 2 weeks ago. Aside from that I write for several other blogs, at some points as many as 5 others per week. I never intended to be a freelance blogger, I just kind of fell into it, but I love it.

The problem for me is that I’m always stuck trying to decide what to spend my time on. I’m a designer too, so I have to balance design projects, maintaining my own blogs, writing for other blogs, and pursuing ideas for new projects. It’s really a challenge for me to find the balance. It’s teaching me a lot about time management and pushing my limits, but I really have no idea what I’ll be doing even a few months from now. I had been planning on phasing out the freelance blogging to focus more on my own projects, but recently some great opportunities have come up to write for some really popular blogs, so I’m going to give it a shot and see how it works out.

Five quality posts from Steven’s inventory:

1. Signs that a Website is Underperforming
2. Freelance Designers: Is Name Recognition Important for Success?
3. 9 Barriers to Success with Social Media
4. How to Attract Advertisers to Your Blog
5. Bouncing Back from a Failed Attempt

Skellie

After starting her blog, Skelliewag.org, in mid-2007, Skellie took over her niche like a storm, quickly becoming one of the household names of blogs about blogging. These days she keeps blogging at Skelliewag.org and her other blog, Anywired, and works as the editor of leading freelancing blog FreelanceSwitch.

This is how Skellie describes her blogging career so far:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

I started Skelliewag.org in mid-2007 and it grew very quickly from that point. At the beginning of 2008 I started my second blog, Anywired. Together they have 8,000 subscribers. You can’t really take someone who writes about creating a popular blog seriously if their own blog isn’t popular, so that was a pretty strong motivator for me!

I have been quieter on the blogging scene lately as I try to solidify a career in creating and promoting web properties, but I’m rushing to get that all sorted so I can start producing new posts as much as I’d like!

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

My biggest challenge is definitely the “Success Penalty”, which is a term I just learned about from “the other” Dave Navarro. Basically it’s what happens when you experience success and, as a result, receive a whole bunch of amazing opportunities at once and eagerly accept them all, only to find that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.

I’m at the point where I’m trying to maintain some of the best opportunities I’ve been given — like working with the awesome folks at Envato, formerly Eden, or being asked to write a book on creating popular blogs — without sacrificing other things that matter, like consistently updating my own two blogs. The good news is that I feel like I’m almost there.

Five important posts written by Skellie:

1. How to Play the Odds Game and Win With Digg
2. The Pocket-sized Guide to Blogging
3. A Practical Guide to Earning Six Figures: Re-inventing What You Have
4. How to Build a Mobile Office and Work From Anywhere
5. The Monster Collection of Moleskine Tips, Tricks and Hacks

James Chartrand

James Chartrand is one of those people who seem to be everywhere you look at. Together with his friend and business partner Harry McLeod he blogs about freelance writing at the successful blog Men With Pens. But that’s not all: James also writes to a variety of popular blogs including Copyblogger and SmallFuel Marketing Blog, comments like there is no tomorrow, and replies promptly to his email.

How is it possible for one man to do all of this?

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

I have to credit most of my fame and success with my level of self-confidence. It’s the single factor that allowed me to put myself out there, market myself hard and seize opportunities the moment they occurred.

I got where I am because I stepped out and made people take notice in any way I could. I didn’t wait for the spotlight to swing my way. I grabbed it and shone the light right where I wanted it.

It’s a tough line to walk. You have to find that balance between “Look at me!!” and “I’m just like you” so that you both attract attention and make people feel comfortable. No one likes a stage-hog or an arrogant person, but I think you have to have a little of both if you want to reach goals of fame.

If you want the milestone path of how I got from there to here, I started by going out to other blogs and commenting frequently. Once I began to be recognized, I guest posted where I could. I wrote emails and introduced myself to people. I joined conversations. I started to use social media. I blogged about my life experiences.

In honesty, it’s all a little surreal. I don’t feel I did anything special to deserve this – I just made sure people knew I was alive and that I wanted to be part of the party.

I will say this: I have to attribute much of my success and fame to Harry’s support. He’s not in the spotlight with me, but he works very hard behind the scenes. I was just saying to him recently that had I been alone, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to reach the heights I have.

It’s worth repeating: Support from people who care about you matters a great deal in achieving your goals. So thank you, Harry, for being there for me.

Now get back to work.

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

We found adjusting to fame tough. We thought we were ready for it (and we were), but it’s always surprising when success happens – a little more than expected, too. We hadn’t realized we’d achieve our goals so quickly and had to adjust to that rising popularity. It’s been a wild ride – and a great one.

Because of our position now, we need to maintain that edge and remain unique. We need to keep it going – and that doesn’t come easy. With so much competition out there, we’re jostling to hang onto what we have and grow this vision even bigger at the same time.

The demand for our business and services has increased proportionately as well. Each day brings new clients and new faces to work with, which is great. We’ve been adapting to their needs continually and are preparing for the next stage in our business.

Some of the biggest challenges have been finding time for projects that we want to accomplish while still pushing this dream forward. It’s an amazing feeling for us to juggle our dream, our business, and our goals all together and come out at the end of the day knowing that we can do all this easily and with great pride.

We have some plans in the works for bigger and better things, and they’re already in motion. You see, that’s the thing that I feel sets us apart. We want this, we’re ready for it, and we already have a solid framework in place to meet any opportunity or challenge head on.

What we enjoy too is knowing that anyone can build what we built. We were the little guy coming out of left field, and it’s amazing to see where we are now. It takes hard work and effort, but we enjoy putting that what we love the most.

Five great examples of what comes out of James’s pen:

1. Guest Posting: Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your Blog?
2. How to Ride the River Rapids of the Virtual World
3. Learning to Fly Without Wings
4. I Don’t Care About You
5. The Savvy Copywriter’s Advantage: Creative Storytelling

It would not be fair to list James’ writing and completely ignore the other half of Men With Pens, so here is a collection of quality posts written by Harry:

1. Real Authors and the Paradox of Desktop Publishing
2. 13.2 Ways Not to Get Rich Online
3. Bloggers That Fake It
4. How to Finish a Project in 10 Minutes

Clay Collins

Clay Collins started his blog just eight months ago, in January 2008, but has been making his way towards the top with full speed. Today his blog, The Growing Life, shares authentic productivity advice with over 3,000 RSS subscribers. Clay is also working on a new project about to launch soon, Finance Your Freedom, a blog about freedom and lifestyle design.

But Clay says he is not writing to increase his subscriber count but to make lives better:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

I believe that I arrived at my current state by positioning myself well within the productivity blogosphere and also by writing infrequent but value-packed articles.

I try to not focus on “tips, tricks, tweaks, hacks, etc.” but instead try and give perspective and focus on crafted and quality writing.

I’m not writing to provide validation to my readers. I’m not writing to give nifty new ideas to fuel intellectual debates with friends. I’m not blogging for Digg (Digg articles are way to general and I just don’t feel them). I’m not trying to give interesting bullet pointed tips that people skim. I’m not writing for productivity hobbyists, personal development hobbyists, or people who get a kick out of this stuff, or the blog “culture.” I’m not writing to make people laugh, or for cheap StumbleUpon or social media traffic. I’m not writing to make friends with other personal development bloggers (although that is a nice side-benefit). I’m not writing in the hopes of getting 1000 more subscribers.

I’m writing in the hopes that I can give my readers solid, tangible, and practical solutions that make their lives better. And I consider my blogging career successful to that extent that I can do this.

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

The biggest challenge is knowing which opportunities to take and which to turn down. Even when you start having just a tiny bit of success, people will want to interview you, call you on the phone, have you write guest posts for them, etc. The trick is to focus on the high-leverage opportunities.

In the blogging world there are lots of flattering opportunities that have almost no payoff. The challenge is let your ego suffer a little and try and ignore “soft opportunities” to the extent possible.

5 life growing posts by Clay Collins:

1. Why The Job-ification of Your Passion Can be the Ticket to Hating Your Life
2. Project Liberation
3. When Crazy Isn’t Crazy Anymore: Life Balance and Insanity
4. Investigative Report: Tracking Down the Productivity Ninja
5. The James Dean Guide to Being a Body Language Bad*ss

Naomi Dunford

Equipped with the most honest voice and the warmest heart in all of Internet, Naomi Dunford blogs about marketing and running a home business at her blog, Ittybiz. Unless reading the word “shit” makes you uncomfortable, I can guarantee that you’ll fall in love with Naomi’s writing.

Let’s hear Naomi tell us why:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

1. I tried really, really hard not to give up on my own voice. The reason a reader chooses blog A over blog B is the writer. You have to be very conscious about not abandoning yourself in your quest for page views. It never works.
2. Commenting. As a marketing consultant, and one whose client base consists of nearly 50% bloggers, I can say for a fact that there is no better activity when it comes to ROI. They say content is king? I’d say commenting is king.
3. Email. Contact is forged by the commenting, but relationships are forged by email, at least when it comes to blogging. Get out there. Find out people’s kids names and dogs names and whether or not they hate their mother-in-law. Treat people like people, not just like bloggers. That gets you the loyalty. When you have the loyalty, you don’t need much else.

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

Honestly? Right now I’m frustrated. I have a bazillion ideas and I don’t know what to do with them all. There aren’t enough hours in the day. For all intents and purposes I’m a full time blogger, and I still don’t feel like I have the time to follow through on a quarter of the ideas I come up with.

At this stage in blogging’s evolution, there aren’t any guidelines for how to deal with the challenges that come along with this lifestyle. You can’t exactly head on over to your local Barnes and Noble and buy “How to Face the Challenges of Being a B-List Blogger.” How do you manage your time? How do you parse between good opportunities and neutral ones? How do you deal with all the goddamn email? Anyone? Help?

An itty bitty collection of excellent posts by Naomi Dunford:

1. What Can YOU Do With Whipped Cream?
2. 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Have A Cushion Before You Quit Your Job
3. Starting a Home Business? The One Piece of Advice You Can’t Ignore
4. Identifying Your Target Market, Or Why I Don’t Want A Monster In My Pants
5. Entrepreneurship: What To Do When You’re Scared Sh*tless

Brett Legree

Brett Legree blogs about life at 6weeks.ca, where he asks the question “What would you do if you only had 6 weeks to live?” Brett is father of four (three of them triplets!), a nuclear engineer, a writer, and still makes time to build a blog with a strong community and following.

He sure must have found the secret to adding more hours to your day:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success?

I certainly wouldn’t be where I am now with my blogging without the great community of people to help me. I started out by visiting other blogs (such as IttyBiz, Men with Pens, and many others), and then started leaving comments - getting to know people. I was encouraged by a blog post at Remarkablogger which basically said, “get out there and blog, instead of thinking about it” - so I did it.

Then I had a custom design made up by Men with Pens, and they helped me to set it up from start to finish (getting the hosting service set up, Feedburner, etc.). So, lots of help from the great people out in the blogging world.

Then I just try to be honest when I write, and especially when I comment. And I try to respond to each comment personally (not hard right now, as I’m not that famous - yet!)

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

The biggest challenge would be balance - I have to remember what is important to me, and also why I started blogging in the first place.

I have a wife and a big family (four kids!), and a full time job as a nuclear engineer. Plus I’m writing a couple of books, and am starting (very soon) a fledgling technical productivity consulting business. More on that on my blog in a bit. So the main thing is to stay focused on what I really want to do - my blog is really a great way for me to interact with people and network. It isn’t the end game.

Five posts you should read if you only had six more weeks to live:

1. Can’t Fly Without Wings? Fake it.
2. Foot Fetish? Six Weeks to a Marathon
3. Reading the Signs
4. Viking Fridays - Burn the Boats
5. Draw Your Own Line

Dave Navarro

This Dave Navarro (not the rock guitarist) is the only personal productivity coach you will ever need. In his blog, Rock Your Day, Dave takes care of your productivity, bad habits, sleep quality, and anything that is keeping you from enjoying your days to the fullest.

Here’s what Dave has to say about blogging:

How did you get to where you are now, in terms of blogging fame and success

Success at anything comes from years of practice - in my case it was years of improving my writing skills. Ever since junior high school I’ve used writing as a tool to make money, persuade people and get noticed, so that gave me a solid head start in blogging. But that’s just a foundation - the real key to building an audience is learning how to market yourself, which ironically seems to work best when you help others market themselves. I’ve always believed that “givers get,” and the more I link out to other bloggers and put the spotlight on them, the more I see the favor being returned.

To anyone starting out in blogging, I’d recommend that you focus on being a contributor to others. Add value to their blog comments with conversation provoking questions, talk about them on your own blog, get to know them via email and discover ways you can help them out. That’s the simplest and most ethical way to get on someone’s radar - and what goes around comes around often enough to make this a winning strategy.

What are the biggest challenges and/or opportunities you are facing right now in your blogging career?

Right now I’m learning to balance writing for my blog with tuning my blog - tweaking it to increase search engine rankings, page views, RSS subscriptions and comment participation. That’s always been a challenging arena for me, so I’ve been hiding for a little while in content creation mode in order to avoid dealing with these technical, behind-the-scenes sort of things. But I realize I can’t scale this way, so I have to build my blog in a way that will make the most of all the traffic it gets.

Fortunately, I’ve spent a lot of time contributing to bloggers who have mastered these facets of blogging, and I’m happy to report that many of them are returning the favor by mentoring me in the art of building my blog. Givers get, and because I’ve focused on that I have some wonderful opportunities ahead of me.

Posts that rock — by Dave Navarro:

1. Pollyanna On Ecstacy: Why Positive Thinking Just Doesn’t Work
2. Too Busy to Fit Something Else In? Bull. Read This.
3. How To Improve Your Sleep & Feel More Rested
4. 5 Things That Become Easier When You Wake Up Early
5. How To Kick That Habit’s Ass (When It’s Been Beating Yours)

That’s how stars are made.

When we posted our “NxE’s Fifty Most Influential ‘Female’ Bloggers” list, we went through the blogosphere as we know it: the blogs we read, the blogs our friends read, the blogs we know people to be reading. But no matter how careful we were, we still missed a lot of blogs that others would consider influential. In a world where Technorati is tracking over 112.8 milllion blogs, I hardly find this surprising.

However, there is more to learn from this than just the simple fact that there are too many blogs for us to keep track of.

The blogosphere, just like the physical world we live in, is divided into neighbourhoods that have only limited interaction with each other. The online neighbourhoods might be divided differently than their physical counterparts, but apart from that they share similar characteristics. For example, in the blogging world, I belong to an English speaking neighbourhood interested in business, productivity, serious blogging, and personal development, although physically, I am located far in the north, in the European country called Finland.

These bloggers are the people who I know by name and with whom I chat first when I plug myself to the Internet - they (you) are my neighbours. But why these people, and not some others?

First, there is the language issue. If I don’t understand the language of your blog, I can’t read it. For me this rules out blogs written in languages that I have never studied (like Chinese, Japanese, Russian), as well as languages that I rarely use such as French or Spanish.

So far so good. The language is a natural restriction: if you don’t understand a language, there is no way you can enjoy a blog written in it.

But that’s not all. There are many blogs written in English that I have never heard of. In fact, I’m willing to bet that there are blogs that are massively influential within their own neighbourhoods, but still virtually unknown to the masses because the link out from the neighbourhood is missing.

Online, just like in real life, it’s all about links. Like the popular saying goes, it’s not about what you know, it’s not about who you know, it’s about who knows you.

New friends are usually made through old friends and acquaintances. Who you know defines who you will know - unless you make a conscious decision to change that fact and build new links outside your immediate neighbourhood. And as who you know pretty much defines who knows you, this becomes an important question to think about when trying to grow your blog’s audience.

Are you blogging for your neighbours?

From the fact that you are reading North x East, I am going to make three assumptions - or educated guesses - so bear with me (feel free to use the comments section to tell me if I got these assumptions wrong).

First, I’m going to assume that one of your most important blogging goals is to gather a big audience. You watch your RSS subscriber count carefully, and you can tell the number of unique visitors in your sleep. And when the growth halts for some reason, you are not far from losing your sleep.

Second, let’s assume that a big part of your readers found you through links from other people’s blogs. This is a fairly safe guess, even if you have done all your SEO work and made Google your best friend.

Third, let’s say that the people who link to your blog are people who follow your blog.

When these three assumptions hold true, a funny (but common) situation where everything spins around in a circle is created: you link to people you know, they link back to you, and the same people read both of your blogs. Every now and then this might result in a few new readers finding your blogs - but in most cases even these new readers are people just like you, from the very same neighbourhood.

And after a while, you will run out of growth potential in this neighbourhood. Everyone who could be interested in what you have to say is already following you, and the rest just don’t care. What do you do next?

This is when you need to find a way to get noticed out from your town and look for other neighbourhoods interested in similar topics as yours.

Link and be linked to

Once you have decided to get out there and broaden your neighbourhood, that’s where the real work begins.

The idea itself is simple:

1. Find a bunch of blogs from a close neighbourhood that you believe might be interested in what you have to say
2. Subscribe to the blogs, and make sure to read them
3. Start interacting with the bloggers and their readers through comments, e-mail conversations, and guest posts
4. Bring more value to the new neighbourhood

I have to stress the last item on the list: If you just wait for new people to arrive to your blog, you’ll have a long wait ahead of you. Instead, what you need to do is to get out there and make a genuine contribution to the new neighbourhood. And only then, after you have become a part of that new circle of bloggers, you can expect the readers to be interested in what you have to say as well.

But how do you find those blogs?

First, in every circle of friends there are some people who have more connections than others. They are the connectors who like to hang out with all kinds of people, and are always happy to introduce their friends to each other. A person like this can well be the first one to introduce you to new people who you never would have met otherwise.

The risk in only relying in connectors is that if your friend isn’t really quite that well connected, all her friends are from the same neighbourhood as you. And in this case, the effect (for blog marketing, that is) of meeting new people through them is not quite as high as it could be.

A solution to this problem is to come up with a list of descriptions of possible neighbourhoods you might be interested in joining. Show this list to your connector, and she will tell you if she knows anyone who would match the profile. This list of requirements can also help you search for relevant blogs by yourself too. Just fire up Google and see what you can find.

To conclude the discussion, here are some examples of what to be looking for:

1. People blogging about a subset of your topic: If you are writing about food, take a look at blogs writing about baking or making soup
2. People blogging about a broader topic than you are: If you write about baking, how about checking out blogs about cooking, taking care of the home, or food in general?
3. People writing about your topic in a different language. This requires that you know the language, and that the neighbourhood knows yours and will be able to read your blog.
4. People from a different race. Unfortunately, race still seems to matter - people do primarily hang out with people who are just the same as they are. If you are brave enough to cross this line drawn in the air, you may soon be lot wiser, and a lot more popular than you are right now
5. People of different age. Older than you, younger than you - doesn’t matter. Just find a big enough age difference so that you have something unique to learn from each other.

Are you ready to step outside your comfort zone, and start blogging for more people than just your closest neighbours?

As it is often the case with technology, blogging can seem like a boys’ club to many, but the average blogger is no longer (if they ever were) a geeky, twenty-something man from the US. Strong, interesting women are taking over the blogging world. They have the passion, they have the skills, and they are here to stay. Today, we’re listing fifty most influential female bloggers at the moment.

If you want to know who the blogging world is talking about, these are the names and faces to keep in mind.

As the best-selling book, The E-Myth Revisited, puts it: you have created yourself a job, not a business. You are working in your business, not on it.

Or in blogging terms: you are working in your blog, not on it.

You Need a System

If you are like most serious bloggers, you have made a sacred promise to write something consistently to keep your blog going. Maybe you even post in advance to cover for the short breaks, but still your blog is tied to your personal ability to deliver what you promise.

Your blog’s growth is tied to your ability to grow it.

This might not necessarily be a problem, but if you want to see your blog take off and grow into something bigger than you have ever dared to dream of, or if you want it to outlive your passion - or even outlive you, you may want to consider building a blogging system.

A blogging system is a set of guidelines that define how your blog should be run in different situations by all the different people involved. Clearly defined guidelines, I might add. This idea for blogging guidelines comes from the world of franchising, where for example at McDonald’s, the operations manual goes to great detail in explaining the new employee how she should wipe the floors or sell a hamburger. In our case, the context is different - but the idea of a manual is exactly the same as in the McDonald’s case.

In this post, I’ll explain the basic rules of building a blog machine that can be run by anyone following the instructions in your manual. When correctly implemented, the blogging system will give you more options than you’ve ever had before:

1. Keep working in your blog: Following the new set of guidelines will make sure that your readers get a consistent experience and know what to expect when they come to your blog the next time. This will make the visit much more enjoyable.
2. Outsource some writing: When you have a clear manual to give to the potential blogger, you can safely hand some responsibility over trusting that everything will work smoothly, just like it should.
3. Outsource all writing: Assume the responsibility of the blog’s editor and work together with paid bloggers to bring your vision about your blog to life.
4. Outsource the editing: Once the writing part works well without your own input, you might want to consider also outsourcing the editing part to one of your writers. This is a big leap, because you are now giving up most of the control - moving to the role of an owner instead of an active performer.
5. Sell the blog: It’s much easier to sell a blog that works than one that relies completely to your own work. In the case of a finely tuned blogging system, the transition from one owner to another may not even be visible to the readers!

The benefits for a functional blogging system are many, but how do you actually build one?

How to Build a Blogging System

First, you need to define the roles involved in your blog. At first, you’ll be filling all the positions, so make sure to divide the roles based on function and not the person doing the work.

Here are the roles I have identified for my own blogging system:

1. Writer: The writer is the one who comes up with all the content for the readers to see. With guidance from the editor, he comes up with ideas for blog posts and brings the ideas to life. Most bloggers feel most comfortable in this role as it’s what blogging technically is about.
2. Editor: The editor takes care of things such as posting schedule, the overall plan for the month at hand, and making sure the writers have everything they need to get their work done. He also checks spelling and grammar, and finds imagery for the posts before publishing them to the public.
3. Owner: The owner is the person who started (or bought) the blog. He has the overall vision of where he wants to take the blog to, in terms of subject matter, monetization, readership, and brand. By paying the editor and writer to do their jobs, he frees time for looking at the strategic opportunities that lie ahead.
4. Various support activities: When your blog grows, you’ll probably need to think about activities such as accounting, web design, advertising, and so on. These can fall on you, the owner, or you can outsource them to professionals.

With the roles in place, Michael Gerber, the author of The E-Myth Revisited says that your next step is to step into the lowest-level role and start working in it. But not just working but at the same time always considering how to best work in the role, writing down all the hurdles and solutions that come your way. Answering in advance the questions that a person filling that role would later have.

When you have completed a guide book for the first role (writer), you will want to try it out in real life by paying someone to work by the book and watching him closely to see if the guide provides the answers to all of his questions or not. If everything works, you can move on to the next role on the list and repeat the process.

What To Include in a Blogging Manual

Every blog is unique and every blogger values different things, but there are some common topics I think every blogging manual will need to include. The list below forms the basis of my own manual for the blog writer, and can be used as a starting point for manuals of your own.

The writer needs to know what you expect from him: what he should deliver, when you need to have the articles, and what to do in all kinds of special cases:

1. Agreeing on posts: How do the writer and the editor decide on what the writer should write? This can include a process for setting up a meeting, or exchanging ideas over e-mail, as well as a description of how to use Google Calendar to define due dates for posts.
2. Writing the posts: A wide topic that includes guidelines for various things like using headers, colors, and all the other formatting options in your blogging platform, tips for checking the spelling and grammar of the post, a guide for looking for photos from Flickr, a tutorial on using your blogging platform, a process for marking the post done and notifying the editor, tips for formulating a good opening sentence.
3. Problem situations: What do you expect the writer to do when he realizes that he’s running late and won’t be able to make it? What about when after a while of writing, he comes to the conclusion that this topic will get him nowhere and needs to change the subject of the article in hand?
4. Editing phase: Is there something the writer still needs to do when he has passed the article over to the editor? Maybe fix some problems identified by the editor? Or is that done mostly by the editor herself?
5. Commenting: The writer needs to be there for a while after his post has gone live to answer comments from the readers and participate in the discussion. For how long? Which comments can be ignored? How quickly should the comments be answered? Are there any other policies you want to enforce?
6. Getting paid: The actual paying would go to the owner’s operating manual, but it’s good to also make sure the writer knows how the payment process works. Include things like payment method (PayPal), the date at which the writer can expect to receive payment (and how often it happens), pricing rules, and a format for an e-mail notification when the payment has been sent. You may also want to add instructions for special cases such as what the writer should do if he’s not receiving a payment, and how to check that a payment has arrived.

In short, write down the system that keeps your blog going, and make sure it’s one you can apply yourself as well.

When you see that your system is working, get out there and start hiring. With the new hire in place, keep your eyes open and follow how well the system is working: listen to the questions from the field and keep updating the guide with every new piece of advice you find from day to day.

This way, your blogging will transform from an ad hoc, learn as you go activity into something organized and reproducable that can serve your readers better while at the same time making your own life easier and less stressful!

Why relax?

Photo by Rick Harris

Sure, blogging is your passion. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be doing it. But quite often, getting some distance to the thing you do from day to day will help you improve.

When you are relaxing and don’t have to keep pushing out content to your blogs, your mind does its own work, looking at your business from a distance. It starts to see things that you could improve, it notices your strengths and weaknesses.

And most importantly, the time away refuels your passion. After a few week’s break you are filled with new energy to pursue your goals with new determination and power.

Maintaining a consistent posting schedule is my number one advice for bloggers, but still, even bloggers need to take a break every now and then to keep themselves running until the end of times.

But bloggers can’t leave their blogs!

Photo by Steve Webel

You’re right, it’s not easy.

But it’s not that much because of a lack of options - the real reason lies inside our heads: just like the self-employed entrepreneur we’re afraid of what might happen while we’re surfing at the Caribbean.

What if I don’t have a blog to return to after my two weeks offline?

What if my subscriber count drops dramatically?

What if I don’t want to return to my blog after I have taken some distance to it?

I’m sure these questions, and many more go through your mind when are planning your vacation. But let’s leave them aside for a while and look at the options.

The secret is that once you start planning, these questions will most likely become deprecated.

Find yourself some good guest bloggers

Photo by macten

Not so long ago, a blogger from Australia decided that he wanted to travel. He wanted to go all the way to California and participate in the SxSW event, but just like any pro blogger, he didn’t want to lose his blog during his time away.

His solution? Guest blogging.

Luckily this guy was so popular that people were fighting to get their posts accepted to the blog. He asked for blogging tips and in just a few hours had over 100 to choose from (he was looking for 13) and could safely leave his blog attended for a few days.

You all know this blogger. His name is Darren Rowse.

Pay someone to post for you

Photo by DavidDMuir

On April first, the most famous outsourcer on the Internet today shared his secret: he revealed that he had not written a single post to his blog during the past year. The most intriguing part of the story was that his blog is a personal blog bearing his name - and the writers were pretending to be him throughout the year.

A few hours later, Tim Ferris had to come out and tell his furious readers that this was just an April’s fools prank. But even so, there is no reason to think that this would be impossible. Tim’s original post gives good food for thought on how to outsource your blog during your break.

Maybe a bit too sneaky for a personal blog, but then again for a niche blog like FreelanceSwitch a similar approach has proven to be quite a liberating option. Most of the pots at FreelanceSwitch are written by freelancers who get paid by post - and even the editing task has been given away from the original bloggers. This way the blog has been transformed from a self-employment job into a real business that can thrive without the owner’s participation - who is now free to take the vacation (unless he’s busy working on something else).

If your blog is generating enough money to pay the writers, this might well be the way to go. But if you can’t afford paying $50-100 per post, keep reading.

Save your posts

Photo by Kate E. Did

A good practice often suggested to bloggers is to write your posts in advance. A buffer of a few days helps you keep up the consistent posting schedule even in a case of an emergency like you or a family member getting sick that will distract you from your blogging.

But the benefits of writing your posts in advantage don’t end here.

It’s a bit like saving. If you write one post to your savings account every now and then, and start saving early enough, you can collect enough posts to finance your two weeks away from the blog next summer. And your readers might not even notice that you are gone!

Let’s do some math:

If you post to your blog once per day, you’ll need 14 posts for a two week vacation. Assuming that you want to take your vacation in July, if you start saving today, you have ten weeks to get your finances together.

14 posts divided by ten weeks means you need to write 1.4 extra posts per week. By dropping your post frequency a bit, you can get away by saving just one post every week. Sure it’ll be hard to resist pressing the publish button when you have just completed a great post. But believe me, you’ll thank yourself in July!

Pick your perfect mix

This was the free option. It’s also the one that takes the most of your time, one of your most valuable possessions. That’s why, I suggest a mixture of all the different approaches: pay for a few posts, get some guest posts from your readers and blogging friends, and then write the rest of your posts in advance.

This way you can keep your blog alive while waiting for the summer - and during the summer when you are relaxing on the beach and thinking about your blogging strategy for the next year.

Bloggers (just like entrepreneurs) can take a few weeks or more off, if they really want to. The next question is: are you ready to do it?

But how do you do impossible things?

You can’t. If something really is impossible, then by definition, it is:

1. not possible; unable to be, exist, happen, etc.
2. unable to be done, performed, effected, etc.: an impossible assignment.

The trick is to know the impossible things from ones that just seem impossible:

1. Landing to the moon? Impossible.
2. Curing Polio? Impossible.
3. Driving a car without a horse? Impossible.
4. Sailing to India? Impossible.
5. The Internet? Impossible.

You get the picture.

Most of the big inventions were considered impossible long before anyone dared to try them out. But history shows that the doubters (most of the human kind) were wrong. Those things weren’t really impossible - just hard to imagine.

That’s the loophole we are going to exploit today.

Getting Started With Doing Impossible Things

I will give you six ideas as examples to start with, but the real lesson is more profound. What I really want to show you is that it’s possible to learn a new way of looking at things: one that sees beyond the man-made limits we have set on our imagination.

Let me ask you this:

If everything was possible, what would you do to improve your blog?

Mark all of your answers down. No matter how impossible they seem. No censorship allowed.

Then take a look at your list and go through each of the impossible ideas one by one asking yourself why you think the item on your list is impossible. What needs to change for it to become possible? What would you lose by trying it out?

If it becomes clear that the price for trying to achieve the impossible thing is too high, leave the idea aside. Otherwise, make no excuses, just implement it.

Doing impossible things feels great, you know?

The Six Impossible Ideas

I promised six impossible ideas. And when you promise something, you need to do it - no matter how impossible it is.

So, here you go. Six impossible things you can do to improve your blog.

1. Interview a celebrity: Pick one who fits your topic and who your readers are familiar with, but make sure to aim high. After all, I don’t think anyone considers interviewing Leo Babauta or Skellie impossible. But how about getting an interview from Steve Jobs or the other Steve from Microsoft? Impossible. (Which to us means “go for it!”)
2. Organize a competition with prizes worth thousands of dollars: Last September, a blogger I was following at that time, DevDad, organized a competition with a new Apple iMac as the prize. I was astonished: how can this 22-year stay at home dad afford to do something like this? Impossible. Well, as you see, it really is quite possible, so your mission is to top this - how about a Ferrari this time?
3. Do something impossible, then tell about it on your blog: My current number one goal is to implement a 4-hour workweek to have more time for my family. Most people will tell me that it’s impossible and I shouldn’t even think of doing something like that. I know it won’t be easy - but I also know that if I manage to do it, it will have two big effects on my blog: First, I will have something important to share with my readers. And second, I will have much more time available for blogging. Both great reasons for challenging the impossible.
4. Make your blog appear in the evening news: In the world of advertisement, TV is usually the most appreciated, and expensive of the alternatives. But you can still buy it with money. To make things more impossible, I’m asking you to get your air time without paying for it - as a feature spot in the evening news. Scott Ginsberg did it by being the luckiest person he knows. What’s your approach?
5. Build your blog to outlive yourself: Lately many of my favorite blogs have announced their first birthdays. In Internet years that’s a huge accomplishment, but it’s still stunning that one year is all it takes to develop a Technorati top 2500 blog like FreelanceSwitch. But can you imagine a blog announcing its 50th, or 100th birthday? Impossible. And thus a worthy goal!
6. Make an impossible promise and deliver on it: This post started out as nothing more than an interesting headline. I thought it would be interesting to read a post about impossible ideas that you can implement. So, I wrote the headline and decided that this will be my next post for NORTHxEAST. You’re reading it now: Writing an impossible post wasn’t impossible after all.

Now, get to work and be prepared to give me a different answer the next time I come to you and ask: “How many impossible things did you do last week?”

Ahoy, an about-page ahead! Dodge the “get my free e-book”-link and return fire on the recent comments-list. We’re almost there after we flank all those ads.

It sometimes amazes me how so many bloggers still haven’t understood the importance of uncluttering your blog. The message is everywhere! Minimalistic designs are pop. And it’s easy to see why; blogs that are full of clutter will cause information bloat. Readers want a clear direction to follow when reading a blog. I, for one know that I do.

Do your readers a great favour by making your blog(s) look more like NxE or Skelliewag than JohnChow.com. Only John Chow can pull off John Chow [dot] com.

2. The blogger doesn’t answer comments.

Sometimes, I would come across a good thought-provoking post that begs for a comment/discussion. So I write a comment, a long one which I poured my dedication into. I would then subscribe to the comments’ RSS feed so I won’t miss the blogger’s answer. But more often then not, the response never comes.

When a blogger doesn’t answer your comments, it makes the effort you put into commenting feel like a waste of time. Every time this happens on your blog, you can probably expect that commenter to never comment again. Do you do that to your own readers? It’s understandable if your blog is really popular, but it is also essential to make sure that you spend adequate time in responding to comments so that your readers don’t feel like they’re being ignored.

3. “What is this blog about?”

I am a fanatic StumbleUpon user and as a result, I come across many new blogs on a daily basis. One of the most frequent question I ask myself when landing on one of these blogs is “What is this blog about?”. While your content and about page are great at describing what your site is about, the typical Internet surfer will probably not bother to read them. What most blogs need is a quick way for internet surfer to identify what the blog is about.

Here’s some tricks that can help your visitors recognise your blog’s topic:

• Put a visual cue in your header. If your blog is about books, why not put a picture of a book in your header? This will not work very well for metablogs and other blogs with more abstract topics. This leads us to our next tip…

• Describe the topic of of your blog using your blog’s title and tagline. Make sure that your blog title and tagline are descriptive and attractive. Something simple is always best, but make sure that it will provide the visitor with enough information so that he/she can decide whether this blog is for him or her.

• Put your content above the fold. This way the visitor can see the headlines of your posts right after coming to your site. If the headlines are persuasive enough, you might have just gained a reader.

4. It’s hard to read.

Yellow text on black background might appear attractive to some bloggers, but I assure you, you will not keep many readers with it. Bloggers who happens to have super eyesight and like their text and font size in the 1 digits pts can also share in the same fate.

Black text on a light background is the best option if you want your visitors to read your content. It is what people are accustomed to, in off-line publications as well as the majority of good online publications. Also, when choosing what font to use, make sure to choose one that flows from one word to the next. You can find out more about the ‘Anatomy of Web Fonts‘ by heading over to SitePoint.

It is commonly accepted that big chunks of text are not very easy to read. Blog readers often like to skim through the content, so make sure you make your content ’scannable’. Also, keep in mind that the proper size of a paragraph depends a lot on the width of the text area/your blog’s design. Wide areas look better with bigger paragraphs and narrow areas are better with small paragraphs.

5. It’s ugly or too common.

Default themes, ugly themes and over-popular themes; they’re everywhere and by using them, you run the risk of making your blog look unoriginal, unattractive and neglected. This is for all those of you who haven’t bought a unique layout from a professional web designer or haven’t spent the time to look for a more unique, lesser used theme.

You can’t even guess how cheap some layouts can be. If you choose your designer wisely, you can get a really elegant layout without incurring a huge cost. If you’re blogging for money, I guarantee you that it will be worth the investment. The impact of a beautiful, unique design can be huge. If you are not in the position to buy a custom designed theme, go out and find yourself a lesser used theme. The amount of free WordPress themes is huge,

However, do not think that by making your blog beautiful will instantly translate it into a successful blog. It is not a magic potion, but it will certainly increase the chance of your blog becoming successful. Vandelay Design made a post about this topic just a couple of days ago.

6. The blogger is too self-centered.

Most blogger fails to understand that blogs are a two-way communication tool, not a one-way broadcasting tool. It’s good to add some personal touches in your content and blog, and sure… this might please the more regular readers of your blog. However, too much “I, I, I” and “me, me, me” can and most often will frustrate new readers.

Remember, when you’re in a conversation, the best way to keep the other participants happy is to talk about him or her, and not about yourself. Of course, that is unless the topic of the discussion is about you. The best conversation is one where everyone can participate and share their thoughts.

7. The design is too ‘heavy’

Shiny headers and funky RSS buttons are cool. Shadows and funny images are cooler. But make it too cool and your visitors’ browser might start coughing. Make your design light and don’t overuse images in your posts. You might lose the reader if the page takes too long to load.

8. The posts are full of typos.

“You’re blog” here and “Ima blogger” there. Posts that are full of typos are hard to read and will give the impression that the blogger is unprofessional, lacks passion, and undedicated. The best way to prevent them is to use a proof reading program and to proof read it yourself before publishing. Read your posts at least two or three times before posting them.

Add your own comment here. What irritates you about blogs?

This is a Guest Post by Mitro Patrikainen, he blogs in Finnish at Aatoksia.net. If you would like to Guest Post at NorthxEast, please send an email to hello [at] northxeast.com

To get where you are trying to get to, you need to convince a significant group of people to believe that you’re not just more wannabe blogger, but someone to look out for. Someone who will make a difference.

But how can you show your seriousness, then?

This is a big topic, and I’m still working on it as we speak, so I decided to ask a few of my favorite big shot bloggers for their insight. Skellie, Leo Babauta, Brian Clark, and James Chartrand are all recognized as authorities - serious bloggers, in other words.

The official answer: Be consistent

Photo by rvsv

Here’s what they said, in two words: “be consistent”.A serious blogger is one who comes in day after day, pounding out quality content, and sticking through the hard times.Skellie, who has written many articles for NorthxEast, says: “If they produce good content on a steady basis, without big gaps and hiatuses, I think that’s the first sign you should look for. Erratic blogging usually leads to extended breaks and eventual abandonment.”

Most blogs don’t survive past the first few months, so the first step in showing dedication is keeping up throughout the hard days. Just like in everything worth doing, there is a dip, a test of dedication, after two or three months of blogging.

Fight against writer’s block, time constraints, self-doubt and the feeling of not moving anywhere. Publish fresh, quality content often - maybe even every day. And you will see results. This is the first and most important sign for seriousness that will show your readers and other bloggers that blogging is a high priority for you.

Leo Babauta agrees: “If you’re a new blogger, there’s no way to convince others that you’re serious about blogging except to just do the best job you can, day in and day out, for as long as you can.”

And Brian Clark echoes: “I think the consistent quality of your content is the only way to truly show you’re serious AND effective.”

How about a shortcut?

Photo by kadj

Officially, there are not shortcuts to anywhere worth going.But it doesn’t mean that you can’t do your best today to get your results as soon as possible, rather than waiting for a chance sometimes long in the future. After all, some bloggers become authorities almost overnight while others take years to get a small following and still no respect from bigger bloggers?

Yep. There is more to being seen as serious than just good quality.

Your image.

The big question isn’t whether you are serious or not, but whether you are perceived as such. And yes, there are some simple ways to make you look more serious as a blogger.

James Chartrand, the blogger best known for his unbelievable commenting activity sent me two lists full of signs that he looks for when estimating if someone is serious or not. The points in the lists are his, but I filtered out the items that we have talked about already and added my own comments to each of them.

Not serious:

1. A Blogger blog: Anyone can open a blog at Blogger, WordPress.com or any other hosted blogging platform. That means that while many of the people blogging on those platforms are serious, there are at least as many who create a blog in five minutes, invest a few weeks to it and then give up. By skipping the first obstacle of putting in some money into your own hosting they give the first sign saying that they are just a bit too interested in shortcuts…
2. A cluttered, non-professional look: The path to being perceived as a serious blogger is full of small obstacles, each stopping a bunch of bloggers from getting to the top of the game. Making your blog look good is one of the early ones. If you pay a professional designer to that sends a clear signal: I’m investing money in this. I won’t be giving up quite yet.
3. AdSense all over and lots of monetization gadgets: Advertisement is a delicate matter. With the help of ad revenue you can spend time and money to creating great content for your readers. But when you overdo it, the message changes. Now, instead of saying that you want to help your readers, you are telling them that you care more about money than their satisfaction. Not a sign of a serious blogger, is it?
4. Cheap posts of no value or regurgitated content: If you have nothing to say, there is no way you can become any kind of authority in a world where what you say is how your value is measured.
5. Poor writing, or a tacky teenager tone: It’s amazing what spell checking, re-reading your posts a few times before submitting them, and getting feedback from your readers can do. Even though it’s true that your ideas matter more than your writing, one of the best ways to give yourself a serious look still is good writing.
6. Whines and complains in posts: This is one of my favorite points. Whining and complaining doesn’t mean that you aren’t serious. Maybe you are even a bit too serious. But there is still something to it that makes the reader think that this is not the kind of person who will survive through the rough times and see light at the end of the tunnel.
7. Doesn’t post when gets busy or apologizes for not posting: If you have done everything else correctly and miss a few posts every now and then, no one will even notice. Until you apologize for the few days of silence. So, don’t apologize. Just continue as if nothing happened.

Serious

1. Implication in the blogging community – a “regular”: When you look at all the bloggers we think of as serious, there is a pattern. They come out from their blogs. Skellie has two blogs of her own, writes to NxE, ProBlogger and FreelanceSwitch (among others), Leo Babauta also has two blogs, and guest blogs all over the place. James posts comments at every blog I follow. This way people can’t miss them. Repeat this enough times and you can’t be seen as anything else than someone passionate about blogging.
2. Willingness to improve: Serious people want to become the best. Not just look best. If you are serious about playing the piano, you practice. If you are serious about programming, you go to courses. You ask for feedback from the regulars, and then fix your course based on the comments you get.
3. Participates in discussions: First, do this on your own blog. Reply to every comment on the blog and if you have the time, e-mail your commentators personally. Then, get out and post thoughtful comments on other blogs. Not the ones that say “great post, please check my blog too” but real comments that bring value to the discussion. This positions you as someone serious about helping others and forming relations.
4. Confidence: When you know what you are talking about, say it so. Don’t apologize or be too careful. Having a strong voice tells people that you stand for something. And people who stand for something are usually the ones worth listening to. Not the ones who just echo what others say.

The solution: Be consistent, but smart

Photo by laine_jarkko

Blogging success doesn’t happen overnight. There is no magic formula you can apply to your blog tonight that would make you look serious when you wake up tomorrow morning.You have to be serious in order to be seen as such.But, there is a big difference between gaining your authority in two years and gaining it in four months. That’s where your image comes to play. By playing the blogging game smartly, you don’t just lie down waiting for food to walk in your mouth, but go and get the food where it is.There is no point in being consistent doing something that doesn’t bring the results you are after.Make sure you are doing the right thing. And then, be consistent. That’s what it means to be a serious blogger.

Here’s how you can be insanely useful and make sure you won’t be ignored again.

Make your point crystal clear

I come to your blog and start checking out your latest post. If in five seconds it’s still not clear to me what your post is about, you’ve lost me. It’s cruel, I know, but the world is full of great blogs so unless we’re friends, I’ll move on to the next blog.

But there are ways you can use to increase that five seconds to ten, and then to actually reading the full post:

1. Use a descriptive headline: This has been said many times. The headline needs to catch my attention, or otherwise you won’t even get that five seconds I promised you just a few lines up. But if you want to be useful, that’s not enough. Make your header, or at least the first sentence tell the reader the one most important idea you are going to present in the post so that she knows whether the post is for her or not.
2. Summarize your key points in subheaders: People don’t stop to read the body of your text before you’ve convinced them to believe that it’s important. That’s why it’s important to organize your post in distinct sections so that even if someone just reads the headings, he will still get the big picture.
3. Use bold: Highlight the most important words and sentences so that the busy reader can pick them up without reading the surrounding text. In fact, I could bet that even from this list, you’re not reading anything but the parts written in bold.
4. Use pictures: They catch the reader’s eye, but also serve as a quick way to share a lot of information at just a glance, which is exactly what the modern reader wants.
5. Use short sentences and a lot of whitespace: Short sentences and whitespace makes the text look less heavy. That makes the text easier to read which in turn improves the likelihood of someone reading it.
6. Keep it simple: A good blog post takes one topic, looks at just one aspect of it, and does that well. Besides, this way you can come up with more posts with the same amount of information you would spend to create one scary, big post with everything packed in it.

In case you missed the point while skipping over my content, here it is again:

Keep it simple. Make sure I can get your point without reading more than 10% of your words. The next thing you’ll notice, I might be reading the whole thing.

And as a bonus: use simple words. If your reader can’t understand the words you use to explain what you have on your mind, there is no way they could understand your idea either.

Make your content useful

The world is full of people looking for something useful to help them in their lives: work, hobbies, career plans, parenting, blogging, you name it.

And you have something useful you can share with them. All it requires is work and some thinking:

1. Find out who you can help: You can’t help everyone. Some people are not interested in your topic. Some think they know more about it than you do. But then there is the group of people who are interested in the same things as you and want to learn more about them. Pick a topic you already have a relatioship with: your hobby, your job, some specific things you have had to go through in life. I’m sure there is someone who needs to hear your experiences.
2. Find out how you can help: Quite often, just telling what you have learned through your experiences is enough. The problem here however is that you need to have those experiences. If you blog about something you have little or no prior experience on, you will need something more. It’s still possible to be useful, but it will require more work: Visit Wikipedia, read lots of other blogs, go to the library, talk to people, read books, do experiments. In other words, you need to learn new things so that you can teach them to your readers.
3. Be practical: Don’t forget that your reader won’t stay for long (even in the best case). That means that you’ll have to work hard to make everything as quick to digest as possible. And when it comes to the content itself, one of the best ways to make your reader happy is by presenting the topic in a practical way. Tips and how-to tutorials are nice because they give the reader a set of clearly defined things to do and try out without making her think too much. Theoretical thinking might lead to bigger ideas but unfortunately a much smaller audience as well.

Put yourself in the shoes of the reader and ask yourself, “Is this going to give her a new boost in [blogging/coding/cooking/insert your topic here]?” Quite often the answer is the same as the answer to another, similar question, “Is this information useful to me? What would I gain from reading it?”

Be there

When your readers have finished reading your post, they will have additional questions. Listen to them.

If their questions come through your blog comments and can be answered in a relatively quick comment, answer them right there on the place.

If the questions require a longer answer, write a new blog post to cover the question.

If the questions come through e-mail, answer the e-mail and consider if the answer would be something others would also like to read on your blog.

Sometimes crafting a good answer will require some background work, but it pays off because when someone asks you a specific question, that’s your best chance in being useful: you know exactly what your reader needs. You just need to go and find the information.

Analyze

After publishing a post that you think should be useful, take some time to see how people reacted: did they Digg or Stumble your post? If they did, what did they comment on it? Did they comment on your blog?

How did the new post affect your visitor stats?

Also, if you have a direct way of contacting your readers (through e-mail, for example), it’s a good idea to ask them for their opinion. If they didn’t find your post that useful, chances are that most other people didn’t either, and you should have done something differently.

Then try again. Write a new post and concentrate in different ways of making it more useful to the reader: make the post easier to skim and more captivating, organize it so that it’s easier to understand, go look for some more background information on the topic.

And you might notice the reaction to your new post to be completely different from the first version. That happened to me again, just last week.

Keep it simple, be useful and make your readers love you

There’s nothing wrong with that picture. But often, this is not only reason why we blog.

That’s why for today’s post I went to collect a broader list of reasons why people decide to start blogging. Some of them are related to making money, and some are not. Take a look at the list and see if you can find your reasons included. If not, share them in the comments! It will be fun to compare our expectations.

Opinions

An opinionated blogger is an interesting blogger.

The great thing about blogging is that it lets you speak freely about things you believe in and challenge the rest of the world with your ideas. Topics can range from politics to business trends to describing the best way to write software. Speak up, make yourself heard and make a difference!

Change

The next natural step from an opinionated blogger is a blogger with a cause.

Blogs are slowly turning into today’s mainstream media. They gather impressive amounts of readers, and people are gaining trust towards established blogs as safe sources of information. That’s why if you are passionate about a topic (for example the environment), that can be an important reason for starting a blog.

Last October, the first ever Blog Action Day made it clear that there is real power in the blogging community. But through a dedicated blog, you can make that kind of difference more often than just once a year.

Some world changing blogs to challenge your thinking:

1. Escape Adulthood
2. EcoWordly
3. No Impact Man

Fame

If you don’t make a name for yourself, someone will make one for you. (Scott Ginsberg)

This is one of my favorite reasons for having a blog because it serves as a tool for achieving so many of the other reasons listed in this post: When you are known for something, you can land money making opportunities, get people to buy your products, make them listen to what you have to say on important topics, and even get people to get in touch with you.

If this is what you are after, make sure your blog shows you as the expert you are, in a natural and trustworthy way that makes people talk about you and quote things you write.

Some personal branding blogs that make a difference:

1. Seth’s Blog
2. Self Made Chick
3. Skelliewag.org

Money

I started this post by collectively admitting our shared, secret dreams of being Darren Rowse.

Many of us have professional blogging as at least one of the top reasons for building our blog (Let me know if you don’t!). And who could blame us? Running your own blog as a full time job sounds almost too good to be true. But it takes a lot of work and time to get there - and even then only a handful of us will reach the same kind of success the top bloggers do.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get at least a small piece of the cake. Even if your main focus is on something as important as raising climate change awareness, there is no reason you couldn’t make some money from your blog at the same time. It may not be your only blogging related income, or it might not be the main reason for your blogging, but nevertheless, something worth considering.

Sales

The other, perhaps more straightforward way of making money through blogging is by using your blog as a support tool for the rest of your business: When you get your most loyal customers to sign up to your blog, you can use the blog to create buzz about your upcoming products, make your loyal customers even more loyal, and give them some ammunition to use when selling the product they love to their friends and relatives.

If you are running a business, this is what most blogging consultants would tell you to do. Just mix in some values and personality and you’ve got a killer recipe in your hands - assuming your product is good enough to collect fans…

My favorite example of a company doing a great job in business blogging is 37 Signals through their two blogs: Signal vs. Noise and the newer 37 Signals Product Blog.

Friendship

I didn’t start blogging to make friends.

In fact I started my blog as an experiment to see how long I could keep it up, and what I would be able to grow it to. But now I realize that one of the most important things that has happened during my blogging career is that I have made a bunch of blogging buddies who challenge my thinking, raise interesting questions, and keep me accountable on my goals. This is a side effect I’m more than happy to welcome to my blogging life!

To me this was a side effect, but it can also be your goal from the beginning.

If that’s the case, the most important tip is to make it personal. Talk with a human voice, sharing your own experiences and asking questions. Don’t hide behind a mask but let your readers see the real you! And don’t forget to show that you are interested in seeing the real them as well.

Love

What is your biggest love?

For some, it’s food. For some, music. Programming. Knitting. There are as many things you can feel passionate about as there are human beings.

When you feel deeply about something, it’s only natural that you want to share your love with others. You don’t care whether you get paid for it or not, you just want to tell about your love to everyone. This can lead to a blog full of superlatives that no one can stand to read, but at best it can be an experience that makes the reader fall in love with your favorite topic. Kathy Sierra’s blog (unfortunately not updated anymore), Creating Passionate Users, was something like this. The passion was so clear to see that even after almost a year of silence, the blog still feels alive.

When you love the topic you write about, it shines through your every word. And that’s why there is no better reason for blogging than love.

Take love as the main ingredient, mix in a few of the others, like friendship, fame and money, and you have a killer blog in your hands.

Your mix?

And now we get to my favorite part, the moment when I shut up and start listening (in terms of blogging ingredients, this is the friendship building moment).

I believe no blog consists of only one of the ingredients described in this article but they are all mixtures that look somewhat like the blogger. What does your mix look like? Share your thoughts in the comments!

I’m from Finland, a country of 5,2 million inhabitants at the northern end of Europe, right between Sweden and Russia, so when I started blogging, my decision was easy: if I wanted to reach more than a handful of people, I had to go with English. If you speak French, Spanish or Chinese, there is a bit more incentive for writing in your own language, but even then, the only way to reach the whole population of our planet is to write in English.

It’s not always easy, so that’s why today I am sharing with you the ten most useful and practical tips for writing in a foreign language that I have learnt during my blogging career.

1. Read in English

When you want to master a language, you can never read enough.

Every new book, short story or article you read teaches you new words, new ways to formulate sentences, and more natural ideas on how to use the language. They go to your subconscious and slowly start becoming more natural to you, until one day you notice that you start to think in English and know that you’re on the right track.

The easiest way to get started with reading in English rather than your own language is to pick up a non-fiction book on a familiar, interesting topic. Non-fiction tends to be easier to follow than fiction (fiction authors use tricky words to touch their readers’ feelings) and reading about a familiar topic makes it easier to guess what the author is trying to say to you when you don’t quite understand the words he’s using. Don’t use a dictionary unless you really have to - just skip the parts you don’t understand. If you make your reading feel too much like work, you’ll lose the fun in it, and the habit of reading won’t last for long.

Some great, free e-books to get you started:

1. The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
2. Make a Name for Yourself by Scott Ginsberg
3. Why’s Poignant Guide To Ruby: This is a programming book, but also a reading experience like no other. I suggest you take a look even if you are not interested in learning to code in Ruby.

2. Listen to native speakers

Blogging is a form of public speaking, which is why one of the best tips for making your text come alive is to write as you speak.

But if you don’t speak English every day, this is a rather tricky advice to follow. So, one thing I have found useful in practicing conversational writing is to watch and listen natives speak.

The Internet comes to rescue here through podcasts and videos from speaking events. Pick your favorite speakers and listen to them deliver their message. You will learn not only about how they use the language, but also how to captivate the audience, and a bit about the topic at hand.

Check out these videos for a good start:

1. Randy Pausch on Time Management
2. Steve Jobs talks to Stanford students
3. Scott Ginsberg, “that guy with the nametag”, tells you how to be more approachable at NametagTV

3. When writing in English, think in English

This is one of the most important tips that separate a decent foreign language writer from a lousy one. The lousy writer thinks in his own language and then tries to translate his thoughts to English. But that simply doesn’t work: the idioms, grammar rules, and cultural differences make text written in this manner sound clumsy and unnatural.

Finnish is probably one of the extreme cases when it comes to grammar. In Finnish we concatenate a big part of words together (for example a railway station would be called railwaystation in Finnish) whereas English is full of small words. We have no future tense. We don’t use prepositions but suffixes… The list of examples could go on forever.

That’s why every time I set out to write in English, I push all my Finnish thoughts far to the background and don’t even look back. Then I pretend to be English speaking until the work is done and I can move back to my Finnish self.

I suggest you do the same.

4. Write

The best way to learn anything is by throwing yourself out there and practicing. With writing practice is even more important. In fact, I would give you the same advice even if you were considering writing in your native language. But of course, it’s even more important when writing in some other language.

When you are just starting out with your blogging, you should write something every day to really get your writing routine developed. After a while it’s OK to drop the pace a bit - although even then, if you want to become best at what you do, keeping up the habit of daily writing helps a lot.

Write in different styles: lists, humorous posts, serious posts, interviews, and if you have the time, even text that is completely unrelated to your blog. Just to get more practice.

5. Trust your gut

The human brain is an amazing machine.

You put in the source material by reading, listening to people talk, and speaking. Then you start writing your own blog posts and tune in the mind set of writing in English. And all of the sudden, words just start flowing from straight from your brain to the keyboard.

This can be a bit scary at first as you don’t know how you have learned the sayings and word plays you are using, and can’t be sure if they are correct or not. Uncertainty is the price you have to pay for trying to learn to use the language in a natural way. You just have to go with your gut and trust your brain when it keeps popping up words that you didn’t know you even knew.

I usually write freely on my first cycle, just trying to get the words and ideas out on paper. And then, on the second round of checking my text I drop sayings that sound too uncertain to me - or run them through a friend to see if they make sense or not. Usually they do.

6. Proofread

When you have finished writing your article and it seems nearly perfect to you, the next thing to do is to check it for typos, grammar mistakes, and just some plain weird sounding sentences.

The easiest way for checking for typos is to use a spellchecker:

1. If you have a word processor, you can use the spell checker that comes with it.
2. If you are using Firefox as your web browser, you can use the built-in spell checker support.
3. Another option for having a spellchecker in your browser is Google toolbar.
4. And finally, if you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, you can use the spellchecking feature built in to WordPress ever since version 2.1.

Checking for grammar mistakes is a lot trickier. What I do is that I usually check the grammar first in Microsoft Word or in an online tool and then go through it manually. For manually checking your grammar you can use a checklist of the most common grammar mistakes (here’s another one) or just play it by the ear, depending on how much you trust your own English language skills.

And of course, if you want to play it safe, you can always ask one of your English speaking friends to double check your article once you have done all in your own powers.

7. Have English-speaking friends who are not afraid to correct your mistakes

The best way to learn to sound like a native is to hang out with them as much as you can. By paying a close attention to how they speak, you will learn the sayings they use, the slang, and even the jokes that they throw at you. All of this is important in making your English sound more natural and conversational rather than something learned from a book.

Instant messaging, e-mailing, or even chatting with them face to face, if possible, are all good ways to learn from friends. And the best part in all of this - you can do it while having a great time getting to know new, interesting people.

When you apply tip number five, having native friends to point out your mistakes gets even more important. Even my gut goes wrong every now and then, and at times like that I rely in my friends. When they notice something weird in my posts, they let me know and guide me to the right direction.

8. Study spelling and grammar

Yeah. I admit it, this doesn’t sound like a lot of fun at all. But to achieve greatness, you have to put in some effort. And in the end, the reward of learning and becoming more confident with your writing is really worth it. Go find the books you were using on your English courses back in school, or if you can’t find them, check if there are any good course books at the local library.

If you still want to go one step further, you can enroll to a language course. Just make sure to pick one that is mostly about creative writing, because that will get you moving faster towards your goal.

But you don’t have to go that far for good results. These days you can find pretty much everything on the web - also material for studying English. Check out these links to get started:

1. Visual thesaurus: A fun way to improve your vocabulary by finding synonyms and related words. The page also contains word lists and a word of the day. For example, today I learned that Sesquipedalian is a fancy word that simply means long.
2. 40+ Tips to Improve your Grammar and Punctuation: A sesquipedalian list of tips and tricks to improve your English from the Dumb Little Man blog.
3. Dictionary.com: I use Dictionary.com mostly for checking up words that I have used when I’m not sure if they mean what I think they do. But that’s not all you can do with this brilliant web site. They have an interesting feature called reverse dictionary that looks up words when you write few words to describe their meaning, and a good list of further online resources for writers to check out.
4. The Economist Style Guide: The guide book given to all journalists who write for The Economist. Most of the advice applies really well to blogging.

With online services like these you will soon notice that learning English is indeed a fun activity that fuels your curiosity and gets you even more excited on your writing.

9. Commas and hyphenation - the tricky buggers

Commas are hard. Hyphenation nearly impossible.

The good thing here is that not even the English speaking bloggers always get these things right. But does that mean you don’t have to worry about them? No. If you want to be a great writer, you have to try to practice the hard things as well.

Let’s tackle hyphenation first: Definitive rules for how to do this right don’t even exist, so the trick I have adopted is simply to never do it. When blogging, you can always keep words in one piece and thus never make hyphenation mistakes.

Unfortunately you can’t get past commas and punctuation that easily. All you can do is to learn about using them and then always double check your text to see if your punctuation is correct.

1. Tips on Using Commas at Dumb Little Man.
2. Top 4 Guidelines for Using Commas Effectively at About.com.

10. Relax

Last comes the most important tip of all: Relax, and enjoy your writing. To be a great writer, you have to put in a lot of effort, but it’s not going to happen overnight. So, while you are practicing, don’t panic. Just write the best content you can with the skill set you have right now. Put it online on your own blog and learn more as you go.

Also, when you think about it, blogging is quite a forgiving platform: many of your readers are not from the English speaking parts of the world and won’t notice the small mistakes you make with things like prepositions or commas. Plus, people these days are busy. They don’t have time to stop and read every word you write. While that can be annoying in the sense that you can’t get their full attention, it also means that they won’t notice all of your mistakes either.

Relax, have fun, and share your thoughts with the world!

People don’t read interviews.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. In this article I will share three common mistakes that make your readers skip interviews and browse to the next blog. When you recognize the mistakes and follow these simple tips, blog posts will soon be some of your most popular content.

Mistake #1: Putting the wrong person in the center of attention

First of all, people come to your blog to get something for themselves: advice, inspiration, ideas, or maybe a good laugh after a stressful day at work.

Second, the reason why they come to your blog (and not to Joe’s from next door) is that they like you and want to hear what you have on your mind.

And only third, they might be willing to hear about someone else.

It’s not about you. It’s not about the person you interview. It’s all about the reader.

1. Interview people who matter to your readers:

Joe from next door might be an interesting person, but unless he has something useful to say to your readers, pick someone else. Make sure the person you choose has a story worth telling, and better yet, a story related to your niche. Also, it never hurts if your readers can recognize the name of your interviewee.

2. Ask questions that your readers would ask:

It’s easy to go wrong and to try to please the person interviewed too much, trying to guess what he would like to be asked rather than what your readers would want you to ask. There is no better recipe for a boring interview. If you don’t want that, try something different. Do your homework, dig deeper, and come up with edgy but friendly questions that
reveal something that no one knew about the interviewee before.

3. Edit. Edit. And edit still some more:

You don’t have to publish everything the interviewee says. Cut, paste, and reorganize if needed to make sure the story comes out loud and clear. If the interviewee makes grammar or spelling mistakes, correct them. Rephrase his words to make them easier to understand. Just make sure you don’t put words in his mind and keep the message intact. If you are unsure about the end result, ask the interviewee for feedback.

4. Comment:

Your readers come to your blog because of you. They have chosen you because of your expertise, because they like your ideas, or maybe even because they think you are a nice person. No matter what the reason, they expect you to speak up - so don’t stay silent. Bring your comments to the interview and make it a discussion between you and the person interviewed.

5. Ask your readers to contribute:

Once you have involved yourself in the discussion, the next logical step is to bring in your readers. Ask them to comment on the interview, or answer your questions at their own blogs. Or what if you go as far as to just interviewing your readers in the first place?

Mistake #2: Making the interview look like an interview

It’s one thing to make your interview useful. But it’s just as important (if not even more) to make it look useful.

If all your readers see is just another interview, they won’t read the article long enough to see that you have gone through the trouble of finding an insanely useful topic, picking a great interviewee, and actually asking the right questions.

They will just skip it and never look back.

1. The headline:

Make sure your headline tells what the interview is about and why the reader can’t afford to miss it. Not just the name of the person interviewed. If the interviewee is well known, you can use her name to make the story sell better, but even then, give a hint about the content of the article: “Jennifer Lopez: Men Are Scared Of Me”. If there is a risk that no one will know her, drop the name and dig deeper in the content. For example: “What To Do When Men Don’t Dare To Look Your Way”

2. Formatting:

If you really want to make your interview look useful, leave the familiar questions and answers formatting behind and go creative: Use the information you got from your interviewee and formulate it into a list of ten most important tips. Tell the person’s story and share the things you learned from him in your own words. Write a list of quotes. Just don’t do questions and answers.

3. Highlights:

Pick the best quotes from your interview and highlight them to catch the eye of your reader. When you have caught that much, the likelihood of him continuing all the way to read the rest of the post increases already a lot.

4. Images:

Interesting images related to the story you are telling through your interview have the same effect as highlights. Multiplied by hundreds.

Mistake #3: Forgetting the call for action

What do you want to achieve through the post? Do you want to create discussion? Get comments? Teach your reader a new skill or way of thinking?

No matter what your goal is, make sure you have one and let your readers know it by calling them to action. In most cases you just want to get them to talk:

1. Ask a question:

Spare one of your interview questions and target it to your readers. Or even better, ask your interviewee to come up with a question he wants to ask from the audience. This way the communication will go two ways: instead of just you and your interviewee talking to the readers, they can also talk back.

2. Let your readers ask questions:

Ask the person you interviewed to stick around for a while to answer questions from the audience. Make sure you mention this clearly in the post, and watch your community come up with their own questions that are even more interesting than the ones you asked in the first place.

3. Take a stand:

Take the side of your interviewee or the one against him to create some conflict. This feeling of conflict will make your readers respond to you to either support you or correct you.

Mistake #4: Following my advice too closely

I hope that through this post I have given you new ideas for your next interview. Sure, if you follow these tips, an interview will no longer be a quick way to fill a slow week in blogging, but might even take more time than your normal posts.

But then again, your next interview might be one of your best posts ever.

To make the interview perfect, you need to concentrate on your readers, and to think about what suits them best and what they expect from your blog. Pick the ideas that you think will work, and use your imagination to come up with something totally different.

Also, if you have found any other useful tips for making your interviews stickier, share them in the comments so that we can all learn from each other’s experiences.

What kind of eBook should I write?

When answering this question, form follows function. The amount of work you need to put in will depend on what you want your eBook to do.

Encourage subscribers — a report of anywhere between 5 - 30 pages should be sufficient to motivate potential subscribers to action. Offer the eBook download via your feed footer only, which makes it essential that visitors subscribe before they can download it. Instead of trying to write a miniature book, I’d suggest expanding on one of your most popular articles or exploring one of your blog’s key concept in more detail. If you’ve coined a term, for example, hinge the eBook around that term. Chris Garrett’s Killer Flagship Content eBook is a prime example of this strategy. You can use BlogClout’s Feed Footer Plug-in to add the link to your feed.

Create a souvenir — you can repackage your archives in eBook form in less than a few hours. The result will be a fantastic little item for your readers to keep or print out, and something they can share with others.

Aim to go viral — eBooks make it very easy to share ideas. If you create an eBook designed specifically to be shared, you can expect other bloggers to offer it for download and copies to be sent around through email. If you don’t want to put a lot of work into it, a short eBook exploring a new, useful idea will suit you. If you want to put more effort into it, you could create something as long and value-packed as Seth Godin’s Ideavirus.

Sell it to your readers — bloggers have sold all kinds of eBooks to their readers, from 10 page reports, 80 page manifestos to 200 page guidebooks. You can charge more for a longer eBook, but you might sell less copies. Your sales will hinge on the quality of your blog content and whether or not your eBook is attractive to your blog’s audience. You can also market an eBook as being, say, 100 pages, even if there are only about 200 words per page (as opposed to the usual 500). This also makes your eBook easier to read.

What tools do I need?

eBooks are almost always .pdf files and there are plenty of free programs you can use to create them, even if you don’t own Adobe Acrobat. PrimoPDF allows you to use MS Word’s ‘Print’ function to save documents as PDFs. Adobe’s CreatePDF service allows you to convert documents to PDFs online or use their free desktop printing software.

Most eBook writers will type out their rough draft in a word processing program, then either transfer it into Adobe Acrobat or use the same word processor to format the eBook as they’d like it to appear as a finished product. If your design skills are lackluster, you can search for a freelancer who’ll do this for you.

How do I start?

Your eBook will be easier to write if you work from a solid plan. Work out roughly how many pages you’re aiming for, what kind of topics, sections or chapters you’ll cover, and approximately how many pages you want devoted to each.

Instead of writing from start to finish, it might be a better idea to tackle each section individually and then string them together. If you try to start right at the beginning the task can seem insurmountable, particularly if you’re aiming to write something quite long.

My next suggestion would be to develop a writing schedule. When writing my eBook (which I’m currently editing), I dedicated one day a week to the eBook alone, with an aim to get it done as quickly as possible. You might choose to set aside one hour a day, or one hour a week instead.

Your time allocation will depend on how quickly you want to get the eBook done. I’d also suggest working on it in times when you usually write blog posts anyway, because your brain is used to being in writing mode at that time. Trying to schedule an eBook writing session when you’re usually asleep will probably be met with some biological resistance!

If you find yourself routinely putting off your writing sessions, a blitzkrieg approach might be better for you. Set aside one weekend or several nights in a row where you’ll write non-stop and try to get the eBook’s first draft finished. The result might not be pretty, but everything gets easier after that first draft is done.

Don’t write and edit as you go along. Trying to write a final draft from the outset will make you feel unsatisfied with the work you’ve done, which will almost always lead to procrastination. If your eBook is to be a quality product, you must feel good about the writing process.

When you’re done

The most common way to distribute an eBook via a blog is eJunkie. In addition to handling sales it also allows you to set up an affiliate program where readers make a certain percentage of the profit on every sale that they refer you. An affiliate program does two things: reaches out to more buyers and creates more buzz around the book. It also encourages positive reviews. Let’s face it — nobody is going to trash a book they’re trying to sell!

Here are a few other marketing ideas you can use to sell your eBook:

Money back guarantee — the security of the money back guarantee makes people more likely to buy. This will outweigh the amount of people who claim a money back guarantee while still claiming the eBook. Most people are honest and will only ask for their money back if they’re genuinely disappointed with the product.

Give subscribers a discount coupon — include a special code in your feed footer and allow individuals who provide the code to purchase the eBook at 20% off (or some other percentage).

Offer pre-orders at a discount rate — you can create hype around your eBook by offering discounted pre-orders before you publicly release it. Just make sure it’s finished, first.

Create a special mailing list for eBook owners — provide a password or URL in your eBook that allows owners to sign up for an exclusive newsletter. Make the newsletter worthwhile by providing exclusive offers and articles to those who’ve signed up. I’d suggest not sending out a newsletter more frequently than once every two weeks to avoid being seen as intrusive.

Good luck! If you need any more advice on writing an eBook, I’ll be answering questions in the comments section of this post.

1. Keep track of milestones.

Things like reaching 100, 1,000 or 10,000 subscribers, getting an email from a popular blogger, making the front page of Digg or getting your first AdSense check are all important blogging milestones. Keeping track of them on a time-line allows you to identify both purple patches and troughs, but most importantly, it provides a record of the highlights in your blogging career. Looking over your milestones can give you a motivational boost on days when you’re feeling ambivalent about blogging and its rewards (and even the best of us have those days). Typing or writing a milestone into your record can help the reality of your achievement to set in.

Your milestones time-line could be a text file, a piece of paper stuck to your wall, a scrapbook or a note file on your phone. The format doesn’t matter, as long as it’s easy to access and update.

2. Structure blogging around your family and social life.

One of the finest qualities of blogging as a hobby is its flexibility. You can write posts when you want, where you want, meaning you can structure your blogging to fit around the most important things in life. Some kind of blogging routine is important (even if it’s flexible), but if your blogging often gets in the way of your family or social life, you’re going to start resenting it rather than enjoying it — or you might start simply neglecting it. One simply way to enjoy blogging more is to try and write posts or answer emails during the quietest period of the day for you. That might be early in the morning before work, during your lunch-hour, or late at night. Set aside zones of time where you often see friends or spend time with your family and make sure to blog outside those times.

3. Find your favorite place to blog.

Certain locations and settings can seemingly induce an automatic flow of ideas and fluid writing. The very act of experimenting with different creative settings can take your blogging to another level, so it’s worth doing! If you’ve got a laptop, you can write posts almost anywhere. Go down to your local cafe, the park or the local library and work out which location you find most inspiring (though it might turn out to be home!) Free wireless at any location is a bonus. If you don’t have a laptop, you could try drafting your posts with a paper and pen in an inspiring location and typing the final draft into your computer.

4. Get to know your readers.

Your blogging success depends on your audience. In many ways, so does your enjoyment! Getting positive feedback and hearing that you’ve helped or entertained people you’ve probably never met feels pretty good. However, by putting so much time and effort into creating great content and promoting your blog it’s very easy to become disconnected from your audience, either by not reading and answering comments, or by not answering reader emails. Without the positive feedback and re-enforcement an audience provides you might start to feel like you’re blogging in a vacuum. Remembering to engage with your audience is a simple way to enjoy blogging more even when your other goals (creating a popular blog or making money online) aren’t yet falling into place.

5. Add an income stream to your blog.

If you’re not yet monetizing your blog, adding an income stream (like a banner ad or affiliate program) can be a fun thing to do, as long as you don’t become too pre-occupied with it. Even if you don’t make more than small change, you might make enough to pay for your monthly hosting or your domain name, or for your kids’ pocket money, and every little bit helps. Part of the fun is watching this income stream grow as your blog does.

6. Engage with other bloggers.

If you’re like me, your friends and family look at you with a quizzical, slightly impressed, slightly confused expression when you start to talk about the blogging world. Through blogging, I’ve been able to meet people know actually know what I’m talking about when I start to go on about RSS feeds, bounce rates, guest-posts and being Dugg ;-). Building friendships with other bloggers and being able to talk about your hobby with other like-minded people is one of the best aspects of blogging.

I should stress that in this point, I’m not talking about your traditional networking connections where the primary motivation is: “What can I give this person, and what can they give me?” Step out of that mindset and think of other bloggers as potential friends rather than potential business partners!

A final tip

One of the most illuminating things a blogger can do is to sit down and rank the different aspects of blogging from most enjoyable to least enjoyable. Doing so will help you identify why you started blogging and why you continue to do so. Your next goal should be to maximize the percentage of time you spend on the tasks you enjoy and minimize the time you spend on those tasks that bore you (or eliminate them completely).

If they’re important tasks, consider outsourcing them or approaching them in a different way. For example, if you like the money-making potential of blogging but dislike writing posts, you might find that taking on more guest-posters or hiring paid writers is the answer for you. You’ll never be able to maximize your enjoyment of blogging until you can define exactly what it is that you love about it.

Be intriguing. Bloggers will be much more likely to talk to you if they believe you have something interesting to say. What aspect of you or your blog would be of specific interest to them? There are a few things bloggers enjoy hearing about:

• Successes you’ve had as a result of practicing what they preach.
• Interesting conversations you’ve had about them with others.
• An unusual time/place where the blogger’s name came up (for example, at a conference you attended, or unexpectedly through a family member).
• A short anecdote relevant to something they’ve written recently.

If you’re not sure you have anything to offer the blogger you’d like to talk to, then you can try being intriguing.

Be useful. Perhaps the most powerful way to connect with a blogger, proving useful to them means that in some small way, they owe you one. Here are some different ways you can make yourself of use to other bloggers:

1. Watch over the blog. Let the blogger know when you see factual mistakes, spam comments or broken links appearing on the blog. Bloggers are always eager to correct this stuff and often rely on readers to let them know when a problem has arisen. As long as you avoid sounding like you’re chastizing the blogger, they’re likely to be quite thankful to you.
2. Correct design flaws. Bloggers are not always code gurus. Design elements can display incorrectly or not display at all — or look funny in certain browsers. If you have some skill with HTML/CSS you can point out any issues and, most importantly, suggest an easy to implement a solution. Providing a solution is the icing on the cake — the thing that will truly put you in the blogger’s good books.
3. Spread their ideas. If you’ve written a post sharing some of the blogger’s ideas, make sure to email them about it. This method helped attract Seth Godin to my blog (he even left a comment, which I don’t think he does often. Too busy kicking-butt, I guess.)
4. Leverage your skills. If you really want to get on a blogger’s radar, use your skills. If you’re a Photoshop ninja, offer to design them a new logo, or to customize some graphics on their site. If you’re a fitness fanatic, offer to consult with them about an exercise plan. Put a twist on your skills, make them useful, and offer them for free.
5. Write guest-posts. Bloggers like guest-posters, because a guest-post means they don’t have to worry about writing content for a day. Saving a blogger one or two hours is always very much appreciated. If your post is just as popular as something they wrote would be (or even more so) you will be especially appreciated.

Develop name-recognition. Pitching to bloggers who don’t recognize your name is a little like cold-calling. Once you develop a pattern of regularly commenting on their blog and have linked to an article they’ve written once or twice, the blogger will start to recognize your name. Bloggers really prize engaged readers and are likely to have a lot more time for your communication efforts.

Earn their favor. The amount of traffic you have the potential to send the blogger will influence their eagerness to correspond with you. By submitting their posts to Digg with good titles and descriptions, or by discovering their work on StumbleUpon, the blogger will start to recognize your ability to send them traffic.

Be brief. One of the single biggest mistakes you can make in talking to bloggers is to send long emails. If the blogger you want to talk to is widely read, you can guarantee that they get dozens of emails every day. Long emails require a time sacrifice that bloggers are unlikely to make. If you can’t make your email any shorter while still covering everything you need, break it into points and send just the most important one. Once you get a response, send the second, and so on. Busy bloggers prefer back-and-forth short emails over elephant-sized exchanges.

Be clear. If you’re offering something to the blogger, explain what it is. If you’re asking for something, explain what it is. If a blogger can’t determine what kind of action you want them to take as a result of you’re email, they’re unlikely to take any action at all (and will probably file it for a ‘later’ that never comes.) If you find yourself having to preamble and qualify everything you say, it usually indicates that you’re asking for more than you should.

Don’t be difficult. View your proposed correspondence from the perspective of the blogger. Would your question take longer than a few minutes to answer properly? If your answer is yes, you should think of an easier question, or break your question down into smaller parts. You might really want to know what would be required to make $5,000 a month from your blog, but is that a question a blogger could answer in a few minutes or less? If your correspondence is too difficult, you can expect it to be ignored.

Don’t take more than you give. For a blogger to be eager to talk with you they need to feel that it’s an equal relationship. If you’re constantly asking for links, attention, time and advice and not offering your skills in return, your dialog with the other blogger won’t last very long. A good golden rule to follow: only ask for something when the blogger stands to benefit from what you’re proposing, or if they owe you a favor.

Don’t take advantage of your connection. Once you’ve started an amicable dialog with a blogger, it can be all-too-easy to wear out your welcome by being too eager and monopolizing their attention. There’s no reason to email a blogger more than once a week, unless you’re resolving something. If your correspondence turns to clutter you’ll find they respond to your emails less and less.

Be memorable. Ideally, you want bloggers to enjoy talking with you, and to open your emails ahead of others in their inbox (maybe even look forward to them).

Make every message you send memorable in some way and always cut out the fluff.

Be friendly without fake flattery. If you’re talking to a blogger far more popular than you, it’s easy to start talking to them like you’re not worthy of their time. If you put yourself across that way, some of that viewpoint may rub off on the blogger! If you give as much as you take, you have no reason to act as if they’re doing you a favor.

Some other complimentary similarities between the two include:

• You are putting yourself out there in front of the masses (sometimes this invites criticism)
• Public speaking and blogging are both acquired skills (for most)
• You must be able to effectively communicate a message

So it would stand to reason that if you improve your public speaking skills then your blogging talents would be enhanced too.

How do you feel about public speaking? Would you rather be doing anything else other than standing in front of a group of people and delivering a presentation?

Now that we are into the New Year many of us (including myself) would like to take our blog to the next level in terms of gaining more subscribers and possibly increasing our online income generation. If you would like to really improve the overall quality of your site there is one skill that you can work on that can have a direct correlation with improving your blogging talents.

Of course, I am talking about the ability to effectively communicate a message and make a presentation in front of a group of people, or speak publicly with authority and confidence.

When was the last time you had to stand up and speak to a group of your peers or colleagues?

Many people are apprehensive about standing in front of a crowd and delivering a message but if you can conquer the fear of public speaking you can absolutely improve your blog. As noted above the two are inherently related.

When I was younger and in high school, and even into college, I was a horrific public speaker. I had NO idea what I was doing and I lacked the relevant skills that were required to be successful. For most, public speaking is an acquired talent. My ability to present to a group of people was gained as a Peace Corps volunteer where I was continually asked to make speeches to large groups of people, and in a completely foreign language. Attending graduate school also helped to increase my skills.

If you are not the most dynamic public speaker do not fret because there is hope. However, there are also a few tips and tricks that are specifically related to blogging and presenting, which can have you creating improved posts by the end of today.

Like it or not, blogging is public speaking

That’s correct, every time you publish a post you are speaking to the global public via the internet. The number of people in the world with online access is certainly a much larger audience than any of us will ever have the pleasure of standing in front of, so it is pretty amazing.

Take Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger, for example. I don’t know what his daily visitor stats are, but he has almost 40,000 subscribers, so everyday he is delivering a presentation to thousands of people via his blog posts. Pretty impressive don’t you think? When you approach it that way, public speaking isn’t so bad after all.

What traits do all great public speakers have in common and how does it apply to blogging?

All of the most effective public speakers that I have ever witnessed have some common qualities, and the same is applicable to blogging. If you have the time some day I strongly recommend that you watch one of the many Seth Godin videos that are available on YouTube.

Dynamic public speakers and bloggers typically:

• Know their topic and are well prepared
• Display confidence when speaking or writing
• Take command of the audience
• Speak with an authoritative voice
• Engage the audience
• Add a touch of humor
• Maintain a high level of energy

Additionally, along with the above, top bloggers (and public speakers) are able to communicate their message in a succinct and easy to digest manner. In the past I have had to present to many government officials and in a way they are a lot like bloggers because they don’t want to waste time and they typically have a short attention span. Rather, they are only interested in the valuable information that you have to tell them and they are not interested in fluff.

Successful blogging is no different. In fact, of all the blogs that I read daily; ProBlogger, Seth Godin, Doshdosh, AnyWired and Zen Habits, the writers are true masters of their craft. The authors consistently produce posts that are delivered with a commanding tone, an authoritative voice, a solid message, and they successfully engage the audience and make you think.

Practice makes perfect

If you are not too confident in your public speaking I would encourage you to practice as much as possible. There are Toast Masters’ meetings all over the world and if you are not familiar with them they are a group of likeminded people who gather together to work on their presentation and public speaking talents. In time, you can become comfortable in front of a crowd and even enjoy speaking to groups of people.

When I know that I have to make a presentation, or draft a blog post, there are some general guidelines that I always follow in my quest for success. Here are some tips to start you on your way toward improved presentation skills and blogging:

• Start with your title and create the post from there
• Use visuals as a support mechanism to enhance your post or presentation
• Get someone to provide constructive criticism by watching you practice, or proofreading your post
• Connect with your audience or readers immediately
• Never apologize if you are bombing (only apologize if there is a technical issue)
• Make your points and support them with examples
• Provide information of value
• Seek input from the audience or your readers

As a final tip I would like to add that there are always going to be negative people and naysayers who will try to criticize what you are doing, so whether you are blogging or presenting, don’t listen to them and focus on the positive every time!

Remember, presenting yourself in the public domain is nerve wracking but with a little attention to detail and the proper preparation you should be blogging and speaking in public like a professional orator in no time.

Day 1. Write a better ‘About’ page. A more gripping About page will help convert more new visitors into loyal readers. You can almost guarantee an effective About page by answering the question: “What does this blog have to offer?”

Day 2. Start using more images in your posts. Readers like images — they help set the tone of your blog post, illustrate metaphors and generally make your posts more interesting to look at. You can use a free stock photography service, but you can also use sensational Flickr images.

Day 3. Write a week’s worth of posts in advance. Developing the habit of writing in advance will give you a safety net of content to fall back on when you’re lazy, busy or uninspired. Writing and posting in the same time-frame will inevitably lead to an erratic posting habit, because your readers will never know what to expect from you. Write enough posts in advance and you could also earn the right to a blogging holiday.

Day 4. De-clutter your sidebar. Clutter likes a sidebar in the same way that monkeys like trees. If you have less in your sidebar, you can focus bigger chunks of attention on what’s really important (your feed link, categories and popular posts). Remove unnecessary widgets and put your blogroll and archives on their own dedicated page. It can also be a good idea to remove underperforming ads.

Day 5. Highlight your most popular posts. Linking to your blog’s most popular posts in a prominent location is essential practice, because it gives new visitors a place to go. They don’t have time to search around for good content: the want to see the best you have to offer, straight away. Linking to popular posts can help ensure that the links and comments keep coming, even after the post is several months old.

Day 6. Start making friends on a social media service like Digg or StumbleUpon. These services are a great place to network, because you’ll be establishing relationships with people who have the potential to send hundreds of visitors to your articles. If you vote up their content, you may be able to call in a favor later on by asking them to vote up posts you’ve written.

Day 7. Pitch a guest-post idea at the most popular blog in your niche. Guest-posting is a fantastic way to raise your profile and bring targeted traffic back to your blog. Navigate to the most popular blog in your niche and think of a post idea you think would work well there (but make sure it’s one they haven’t posted about before). Pitch your idea to the blogger and offer to write the full article if they’re interested. If not, you can always use the idea on another blog, or on your own blog.

Day 8. Craft a great resource-list. Resource lists are very popular with social media and can be quite easy to make, particularly if you already have the resources on hand. Pick a topic your target audience is keenly interested in and create a list of resources relating to that topic. You can use your own bookmarks if you have enough. If you’re short on links, a del.icio.us search for your topic will return hundreds if useful links people have saved using your chosen topic as a keyword.

Day 9. Offer a free service to your readers (without expecting anything in return). Whether it’s a logo redesign, free post ideas, a design review, social media votes or 15 minutes worth of free consulting, giving something valuable away for free without expecting anything in return will leave a lasting impression on your readers (and might attract a few links, too).

Day 10. Pitch a link to one of your blog posts to three other blogs in your niche. Take the most popular post on your blog and pass along the link to the bloggers behind three popular blogs in your niche. If they like it, they may link to it in their next link round-up.

Day 11. Add social media links to the bottom of your posts and to your feed. While most people will vote for your posts via the toolbar, social media links or icons can remind people to vote for your post if they liked it. It’s even more essential to add these buttons to your feed, because there’s no easy way for people to vote straight out of their feed reader. Using a FeedFlare to put an ‘Add a Comment’ link at the bottom of your feed items is also a good idea. FeedFlares are available under the ‘Publicize’ tab in your Feedburner control panel.

Day 12. Participate in the comments on one of your own blog posts. Readers will feel as if you’re interested in what they have to say, you might learn something, and you’ll also increase the comment count on your post.

Day 13. Work out an editorial calendar for your blog. It’s a lot harder to put off writing a post when you know exactly when your blog is due for an update. Working out an editorial calendar can help give your blog a sense of rhythm. It can also make you more productive through setting firm deadlines for new posts.

Day 14. Prune your feed subscriptions. I suspect some bloggers spend as much time reading feeds as they do writing posts. Pruning your feed collection can help you save quite a bit of time. If you find yourself regularly skipping feed items from a particular blog, or if you can’t think of one thing you’ve learned from reading a particular blog’s posts, it’s probably best if you unsubscribe.

Day 15. Write a 10-page report or mini eBook. A few hours work will result in a free report you can distribute to feed subscribers only, give out to your readers and encourage them to share, or otherwise leverage to bring more traffic back to your blog. If it’s really useful, it might even go viral.

Day 16. Try adding a new income stream to your blog. If it wasn’t clear already, blog advertising programs can be unreliable. You might be on to a sweet thing with one form of advertising at the moment, but what if the service changes, or goes bust — taking your income with it? If you’re monetizing your blog it’s a good idea to have at least two strong income streams in place, so that if something goes wrong with one, you’ve still got backup.

Day 17. Think up 20 post ideas you can use. Once you know what you’ve got to write, starting becomes a lot easier. Set aside a day to brainstorm 20 post ideas you could definitely see yourself using on your blog. Alternately, you could just use twenty of Mark’s pre-made blog post ideas.

Day 18. Thank your readers. Set aside a day to say thank you to your readers — even if it’s just a short sentence at the bottom of your latest post. Of course, if you can be innovative in the way you say thanks to your readers, it’s a lot more likely to leave an impression.

Day 19. Update your blogging software to its latest version. Out of date blogging software can be vulnerable to bugs and attacks from hackers. Just make sure to back up your previous install (and that you know what you’re doing). You might need to spend some time researching the transition before you actually begin the process.

Day 20. Create strong, alpha-neumeric passwords for all your accounts. If any of your blogging related passwords are single, Dictionary words or letters only, it would be quite easy for a determined hacker to break into one of your accounts. Set aside this day to strengthen your passwords by using combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation that exceed 8 characters in length. Make sure to keep your new passwords written down somewhere in a safe place (and write them down carefully).

Day 21. Sit down and analyze your stats for the last month. Statistics can tell you a lot about what worked and what didn’t. Analyzing stats over an extended period can reveal visitor trends, popular posts and which of the promotional activities you undertook were worth doing.

Day 22. Ask someone to guest-post on your own blog. If you’re friendly with another blogger, invite them to write on your own blog. If your blog is more popular than theirs you’ll have a better chance of being accepted. A guest-poster can inject a bit of freshness into your blog and, most importantly, allow you to focus on tasks other than content creation for a day.

Day 23. Do some SEO on your blog. SEO can be tricky, but if you know a little bit about it, set aside a day to revise and tweak your blog’s SEO. Alternately, you can take the time to learn how to optimize your blog for search engines.

Day 24. Buy a $5 StumbleUpon advertising campaign for your best post. $5 buys roughly 300 visitors. If some of those StumbleUpon visitors end up adding more votes to your article, the result could be a traffic snowball much larger than the one you paid for! Before you start, you can read this post at ProBlogger on advertising with StumbleUpon.

Day 25. Design a custom logo for your blog, or get someone to do it for you. Blog branding is essential. If you’re using a free theme without any distinct branding, your blog will probably end up looking like at least a dozen other blogs using the same theme. If you have any ability with image editing software, design a custom logo. Even using a distinctive, free font to write your blog’s name in big letters can do the job adequately. If you want to go the extra step, you can pay a freelancer or logo design company to brand your blog.

Day 26. Join a popular forum in your niche. A link back to your blog in your forum signature can generate more incoming traffic than a dozen comments spread over multiple blogs.

Day 27. Spend two hours or more on a single post. If you spend a lot of time on a single post you’re likely to end up with a lot of value in one place. Investing extra time in a post can result in some pretty cool rewards.

Day 28. Process your email inbox to empty. You’ll need to answer your emails eventually, so why not do it today? An empty inbox is a welcome sight for any blogger.

Day 29. Start a dialogue with another blogger in your niche. Say hello, offer your help, comment on a post they’ve written — however you do it, send an email to another blogger in your niche and don’t ask anything of them. If you can strike up a conversation (or at least a connection) there may be future opportunities where you can do a favor for the other blogger and, later, have that favor returned.

Day 30. Hold a small competition with a modest prize. Whether it’s an eBook, a free consultation, a DVD or a CD, a small prize and a small competition can help boost reader engagement and participation in your blog without denting your finances too much.

Day 31. Take a day off blogging. You’ve earned it! Set aside some time to reflect on the thirty things you’ve done this month to improve your blog. You really should be proud of yourself.

Since this is my first post after joining the NxE team as a staff writer, I thought that I would give you, the NorthxEast readers a gift that would help you throughout year. The gift that I would like to pass on consists of 52 post ideas that you can utilize in any way that you like, if for some reason your creative juices just are not cooperating.

That’s correct, I am just giving them to you, for FREE to use however you like. If you use one of my ideas, and should you be feeling charitable, a link back to NorthxEast or MyTropicalEscape.com is always appreciated, but not required.

Blogging consistently on a day to day basis is a challenge and we all go into slumps so if you would like to let your mind take a rest once and a while there is one idea listed below for every week of the year. I hope you find them useful.

I generated all of the post ideas by utilizing the mind mapping technique that Darren Rowse, over at ProBlogger, has been writing about lately. The methodology, I picked ten posts, within ten different categories and mind mapped five new ideas from each article. At the end I also give you two bonus ideas.

A little more about mind mapping

If you would like to use mind mapping as a tool to help you to create new post ideas all you need to do is get a piece of paper and a pen, or open a new text document. Then write down the title of one of your favorite posts that you have written, or the post of another blogger, and from there you begin to brainstorm topics that would help to enhance the given article. Or you can get even more creative and head in a completely new direction. The real trick is to allow yourself to be as innovative as you can and not to limit yourself or hold yourself back, but rather just to write the ideas down.

After I chose the ten posts that I would work with I was ready to get started. Typically, all of my posts ideas and creative content development start as a title first. I find it is much easier to craft an article if I have a working title. So, that is what you are going to get for your post ideas in this article -

Fifty-two titles that you can work with and hopefully utilize as they are, or easily modify and create some variations.

As stated above I decided to use ten different categories and create FIVE new post ideas from each of them. The categories are as follows; blogging, linkbait, marketing, social media, humor, entrepreneurship, online business development, design, guest blogging, and blogging tools. This should give you a very good start toward getting over your blogger block (and well onto home run post creation).

Category 1 Blogging - NorthxEast 15 Powerful Ways to Differentiate Your Blog from the Crowd
In one of the best posts about blogging from last year, Leo Babauta dispenses a treasure trove of information about how can you differentiate yourself and get your blog noticed.

• A look at Techorati’s Top 5 Blogs and Why They Stand Out
• Your Site Stinks - Ten Tips to Help You Maximize Your Site’s Potential
• Create Innovative Must Read Content By Following These Three Easy Steps
• How To Swim Against The Stream By Making Your Blog Sexy
• Are You Ready For Server Crashing Traffic - All The Information You Will Ever Need To Make Your Site Remarkable

Category 2 Link Bait - MyTropicalEscape 30 Must Read Articles To Help Kick Start Your Blog, Attract More Readers, And Stay Motivated
My first intentional link bait post that actually had a pretty high (and unintentional) return for me in terms of the people I was able to network with after linking to them.

• Blog Post Buffet 15 Articles Guaranteed To Scramble Your Eggs
• Top Ten Best Marketing Posts Ever
• How Do You Get Your Blog Recognized - Read These Articles To Find Out
• The Absolute Best Posts From Technorati’s Top 50 Blogs
• Blogging 101 Twenty Five Posts To Ensure Your Blog’s Success

Category 3 Marketing - Skelliewag.org Like it Or Not, You’re a Marketer
This post by Skellie was one of my top five favorite posts from last year. If you haven’t done so yet I highly recommend that you go read it now. The article discusses Seth Godin’s “be remarkable” mantra in relation to marketing a blog and growing reader traffic.

• Feeding Green Grasss to the Purple Cow
• Gain More Readers By Showing Up Everyday
• Five Steps For Becoming Remarkable
• The Value of Growing Traffic One Reader At A Time
• Increase Readership With A Viral Marketing Campaign

Category 4 Social Media - Muhammad Saleem What is a top Social News User Anyway
Muhammad dispels myths and quantifies the individual components that classify “what a top social news user is.”

• Want To Make The Front Page – It’s All About Give And Take (ps. give more than you take)
• Ten Tips To Help You Become A Top Digger
• A Review of DIGG’s Ten Best Stories This Week
• Where does your social media loyalty stand – A comprehensive review of Stumble Upon and DIGG
• How to Draft Remarkable Social Media Comments That Get Noticed

Category 5 Humor – IttyBiz (Naomi Dunford) In Which I Confess My Blog Crush And You Could Win Something Awesome
Great humor post by Naomi (who is a fantastic writer) in which she discloses her blog crush and comes up with a tremendously creative way to increase her Technorati ranking all at the same time.

• Seth Godin Ate My Blog Post - So All You Get Today Is This Crappy Update
• 5 Tips On How To Join The Australian Blogging Mafia (Darren Rowse KingPin)
• If John Chow Mud Wrestled Shoemoney Who Would Win – A Theory
• Ten Grammar Mistakes I Found On CopyBlogger
• Top Reasons Why The Word BLOG Disturbs Me

Category 6 Entrepreneurship - Entrepreneur’s Journey Yaro’s Business Timeline
Yaro’s Business Timeline it is actually a series of five posts but if you are looking for entrpreneurship inspiration then I highly recommend you read all of the articles and you will learn about some of the fortitude that it takes to become successful.

• Entrepreneurship 101 - Pursuing Personal Freedom
• How Failure Helped Me To Succeed
• A Roundtable Discussion With Some Top Internet Entrepreneurs
• Five Must Read Tips To Become Successful
• Entrepreneur’s Gold - Motivation and Persistance

Category 7 Online Business Development - DoshDosh The Flagship Blog Project: Creating Multiple Blogs for Profit in 30 Day Cycles
A post that I found extremely inspirational because of the innovative method that Maki discusses that can help us to make money online. Hands down, one of the best posts from last year.

• Flipping Websites - A Case Study Of Recent Success Stories
• Five Types Of Blogs That Can Have You Generating Income Today
• Create A Flagship Blog Network For Fun And Profit
• Warning - These Ten New Niches Will Make You Money
• Outsource Your Writing For Maximum Results

Category 8 Design - Pro Blog Design What Makes A Good Design
Michael discusses the main elements of a good blog design.

• How Proper RSS Button Placement Can Increase Your Subscriber Count
• The Best Font Size For Readability
• Love Them Or Hate Them - Why Header Images Work
• Improve Your Branding By Improving Your Design
• Reader’s Speak Out - What Do You Like About This Site

Category 9 Guest Blogging - NorthxEast Seven Practical Tips On How To Be A Good Guest Poster
I drafted this post after reading many articles about guest posting and I realized that nobody had really written from that angle of what it actually takes to be a good guest blogger.

• Why Guest Posting Is A Very Effective Networking Tool
• How To Craft The Perfect Guest Post
• What You Need To Know About Inviting People To Write On Your Site
• Make The Most Of Guest Posting - Utilize These Backlink Strategies
• Submitting Your Guest Post To A-List Bloggers Is Easier Than You Think

Category 10 Blogging Platforms and Tools - ProBlogger Which WordPress Plugin Do You Use
Darren provides a list of his favorite WordPress Plugins and asks the readers to classify their favorites.

• Five Plugins That Are Guaranteed To Increase Your Traffic
• WordPress Versus Movable Type - Where Do You Stand?
• Declutter The Clutter With These Simple Themes
• The One Plugin Everyone Must Have
• Ten Little Known Plugins That Can Save You Time And Frustration

Whew - Almost there, but I still owe you two bonus post ideas and here they are.

• Want To Improve Your Writing - Step Away From The Computer
• Ten Habits Of Highly Ineffective Bloggers And How You Can Avoid Them

Well, that is it. Fifty-two post ideas that you can refer back to this year if you should hit a slump. Of course, the possibilities for mind mapping post ideas from these articles are virtually endless. The above are just what I could come up with during the course of a couple of hours.

Do you have any post titles, or story ideas that you would like to share? Feel free to leave them in the comments.

Throughout my dealings with top bloggers, I’ve noticed they have some distinct habits which have allowed them to build and maintain a popular blog. In this post, I wanted to focus only on the habits that many of us are lacking, or have difficulty developing. Other habits (like producing great content) don’t belong to top bloggers alone, so they’re not mentioned here.

How many of these top blogger habits could you develop?

1. They’re super-efficient emailers.

If you’ve ever communicated with a top blogger you’ll notice that they’ve mastered the art of using email to say exactly what’s needed and nothing more. The skill is one borne out of necessity, because top bloggers can receive hundreds of emails in a 24-hour period.

What if we developed the top-blogger habit of becoming super-efficient emailers, even though we don’t receive quite as many emails? We’d save time every day.

2. They network with social media power-users.

Have you ever envied the ability of top bloggers to write posts that become popular on Digg, del.icio.us or StumbleUpon at least once a week? Part of it is solid content, but the other part occurs behind the scenes in the form of mutually beneficial friendships with social media power-users. These power-users will submit the top blogger’s posts and almost guarantee them to become popular. The benefits of these relationships are something average bloggers often overlook.

Social media power-users have more to gain from a partnership with a top blogger, but we can start small by befriending a network of everyday social media users. Sometimes a group of people working together can carry as much weight as a vote from a power-user.

3. They blog like clock-work.

Except in unusual cases, top bloggers rarely disappear or go on hiatus. They blog when they’re sick — they even blog when they’re on vacation! If that’s not possible, they organize guest-posters to cover any holes left by their absence. While it demonstrates enviable tenacity, it also displays a respect for the audience they’ve built up. They know that thousands of people will be let down if they get lazy or unmotivated. They’ve got something to lose.

What if we treated our dozens or hundreds of readers with the respect that most top bloggers treat their thousands (at least in terms of posting consistently)?

4. They develop multiple income streams.

Most top bloggers earn an income for their efforts. Because it tends to be a decent amount, they’ve become good at protecting it by diversifying. Online incomes can be fragile and top bloggers know not to put all their eggs in one basket. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, for example, monetizes through advertising, donations and his eBook (Zen to Done). This means that if one of those income streams peters out or is cut off, others exist to make up for the loss.

Because most of us don’t make thousands online, we can fall into the trap of having only one income stream. This might not matter so much now, but if our online income grows in future, it would be devastating if that one stream was damaged or cut off. One lesson top bloggers teach us is to start diversifying sooner rather than later.

5. They outsource to others.

While not all top bloggers are in the practice of outsourcing, many are. From moderating comments, to paying writers, to handling email, to technical issues and administrative tasks, there’s a top blogger out there outsourcing it to someone else. It’s the result of the simple realization that the cost of outsourcing tasks to others is less than the benefits of freeing up time to concentrate on other things (whether those benefits are financial or otherwise).

The average blogger usually isn’t in a position to do paid outsourcing, but you may have skills you can leverage in place of money. I recently negotiated with someone to handle some forum moderation for me in exchange for writing posts on his blog. For the average blogger, you can outsource by exchanging skills rather than money for labor.

6. They know when to relinquish control.

One thing you’ll notice about most blogs run by top bloggers is that they showcase a number of different writers. Many average bloggers struggle with the idea of temporarily relinquishing control to someone else, usually because they fear the resulting content won’t be up to standard. Top bloggers have generally realized that there are some great writers out there. They also understand that allowing others to contribute content can free up valuable time.

If you’ve previously been nervous about letting others write for you, why not give it a shot? If a post isn’t good enough, you can ask the writer to revise it, or simply say no. Ultimately, you have the right to decide whether an idea or submission is up to scratch.

7. They invest in a high-quality design.

Not every top blogger has a slick looking blog, but most do. That’s because they realize the importance of branding and presenting well. A high quality blog design can make your blog worthy of a second look to someone who would have passed it by otherwise.

Not every top blogger with a great blog design paid for it, either. There are plenty of really well-made free themes out there if you take the time to look.

8. They know how and when to say no.

Top bloggers receive pitches, requests and questions all the time. If they complied with all of them, they’d have no time left to do anything else! Once again, the ability to say no is one that top bloggers develop out of necessity. They know how to treat their time like it’s worth something.

The ability to say no can be a difficult one for the average blogger to develop. When you don’t have thousands of readers, losing one through your own actions (or inactions) can seem like a frightening possibility. Despite this, it’s important to realize that saying no kindly will rarely lose you a reader. When you find yourself making a sacrifice without reward, that’s when it’s time to say a polite no.

9. They stay humble in spite of their successes.

With thousands of readers and subscribers it would be easy for top bloggers to become arrogant. While some have fallen into this trap, most of them aren’t top bloggers anymore. Arrogance is a big turn-off. Top bloggers who’ve been successful for a while stay modest because they know their success is and was entirely dependent upon others. Top bloggers wouldn’t be anything if they didn’t get readers, links and social media votes from people all over the world.

When you start to experience some successes with your blog, remember that it’s only because others have championed you. Success in blogging will never come from you alone.

10. They don’t let criticism bring them down.

One of the few inevitable laws of blogging is this: as your popularity increases, so does the amount of criticism you receive. Yes — even if you blog about woodwork, or pegs, or fluffy bunnies. Throw 10,000 people at a page and you can bet one of them will have something whacky to say (which explains a lot of the criticisms leveled at the Digg-effect).

Top bloggers deal with criticism daily, but they’ve learned to recognize when it’s worth listening to, and when it’s not. In unfortunate cases, top bloggers have also been on the receiving end of threats. Because of this, they learn the importance of keeping private details private.

You might not be receiving much criticism at the moment, but it’s important for any blogger to protect their privacy. This means that when you are criticized (and it will happen eventually), you know that it will only ever be words and nothing more.

**Cameron’s Note: It seems that NorthxEast was nominated for Best Blog Design at Performancing, so if you guys do like the design of this blog, please give us a vote at the poll.