Have you updated your blog lately?

www.toothpastefordinner.com

In the last few months I’ve been neglecting my own projects in exchange for client projects. Not smart. I mean I have excuses; job cuts in the writers market, fewer jobs around, and just because I’ve been busy in general, but if you’ve got some personal projects going it’s not wise to ignore them. Why not?

If you pay for hosting for your own blogs, that’s money down the drain if you’re not making money with your blogs. While some of my blogs make a little money just sitting around, they could make a lot more if I actually worked at it.

Your blogs represent you to a point. I have my links to a couple of my own blogs in bios of mine online and in the sig line of my work email. If a potential client clicks on that link, they may not realize that it’s my blog, and mistake it for a client blog. No updates is a BAD sign of my productivity level.

It’s good practice. You can make mistakes on your own blog, play around, see what works best, and mess with ideas that you can’t screw with at client blogs. Why not use your own blogs as a learning experience?

Your blogs, when well done can drive traffic to your client’s blogs which one, clients like, and two, if you’re paid in any sort of page view revenue, can increase your paycheck.

When you don’t update you lose any traffic base you’ve built. It’s like starting all over from scratch – blah.

If you can learn to make money with your own blog, you’ve got some back-up for when client blogs go belly-up. It takes a long time to create some decent income with your own blogs. The only way to make it happen is to keep up with your blogs. While blog income is unstable there’s still a chance you’ll hit on a good niche and make some money. However, when you ignore said blogs you lose any shot at making some of your own blogging income.

So… when times get tough, are your own projects the first to lose your attention, or do you try to make time for them anyhow?

FYI – I may be back with some new blog and online writing gigs later today if time permits so stay tuned.

What Are Your 2009 Blogging Goals…?

Lordy, it’s almost that time of year – goal setting time. Personally, I’d like to get my everlasting box of Cedar photos organized. My son will be twenty before I finish this I swear. Here though, we should talk about blogging. When it comes to blogging, I’ve got some semi-medium sized goals figured out and one major goal…

My major blogging goal is pretty simple – make more money via blogs asap or quit blogging for clients.

Before mid-2008 I was making decent blogging cash; absolutely enough to live on with a little to save. It’s been a lame second half of the year. I’m either going to keep incorporating other writing work into my schedule (which I already started to do) or maybe take a blogging break completely. I actually applied for an out of the house writing gig the other day; I’m that serious. Yeah, it’s a little extreme, but I’m sick of having low funds and it’s making me cranky, and worse, it’s making me annoyed with blogs. I hate being cranky, and I’d rather adore blogs that not, so for me, this is a good goal. I personally like happily blogging, but if I can only choose happy or blogs, I’d rather be happy than be blogging; you know.

Mini goals attached to this major goal include working more on my own blog projects vs. clients (or at least working on my own projects as much as I do for clients), and switching out my gigs that pay less, in order to spend more time on my higher paying gigs. Working on my own projects more won’t bring in more cash right away though, mostly, I’m doing this mini-goal so that I’m not as cranky.

My medium sized blogging goals include: Read more

Informal Poll – Where is the line between link love & too much link love?

Sorry I’ve been MIA – my flu got pretty bad, then I got better, and of course I had work to catch up on. In any case, I have an informal poll question.

Recently, a client I blog for decided that a good way to increase page views might be to try a daily link love post. If you’re lost on link love, here’s a link love example you can view. I like link love posts, because they allow me to offer extra content to readers, stuff I enjoyed reading, that I assume my readers might also enjoy. I also think it’s a decent traffic builder when done in moderation. Read more

A Few Blogging Tips from Darren Rowse

Deb’s Note: In December 2006 I interviewed Darren Rowse while auditionin for a job with About.com. I did get the job and worked as About.com’s Guide to Weblogs for a year in 2007. I’m reprinting some of my greatest hits here. I also conducted interviews with John Chow, the Go Fug Yourself ladies, NBT’s own Gayla McCord and Jeremy Wright. Expect to see those profiles here in the upcoming months. This interview was from the first time I spoke with Darren – now he’s someone I’m happy and proud to call friend. He’s just as helpful and gracious now as he was a couple of years ago.

If you’re interested in blogging professionally, you’re sure to have come across Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger Blog Tips. ProBlogger offers useful tips, an eye pleasing template and writing that won’t send you to the dictionary every five minutes. The tips are practical and you’ll always click away from your daily reading with information you can use. Who is Darren Rowse and how did he come to be a professional blogger?

Darren  began blogging professionally since 2002 on the advice of a friend. While he maintains about 20 blogs, it’s ProBlogger Blog Tips that has captured the attention of many aspiring professional bloggers. Behold the wisdom that is Darren Rowse.

Darren Rowse on The Appeal of Blogs: Probably the first thing that captured my attention with blogs wasthe ability that they gave the average person to have a voice and be  listened to on a global scale on their topic of interest.Secondly – they are so easy to set up and maintain. As someone with  very little technical ability the idea of being able to set up a  website in just a few minutes (I was using Blogger when I first  started) was very appealing.

Lastly (and there could be many more) – the conversation that I saw  happening on the first blogs that I cameacross was very attractive.  Here were people all around the world talking about my interests,

sharing ideas, giving each other feedback and building community – I  just had to be a part of it.

Darren Rowse on Mistakes Made by Aspiring Pro Bloggers:

Giving up too quickly. I see many bloggers start blogs with dollar  signs in their eyes, thinking that they’ll be earning big dollars  very quickly, only to find that it takes many months (or years) to  get a blog running to it’s potential.

Darren Rowse on How to Become a Full Time Professional Blogger:

In short.

• Pick a topic that you enjoy and have knowledge in

• Set up your blog

• Start writing

• Interact with others writing on the same topic

• Interact with those readers who find your blog

• Find a revenue stream that fits with your niche

• Gradually put more time into blogging and less time into your other work as the income slowly grows from your blogs

• Keep writing

• Keep optimizing your income streams

• Consider starting other blogs

• Repeat all of the above

Darren Rowse’s Advice to Those Just Starting Out as Professional Bloggers:

Start out with a topic that you enjoy. Blogs take a long time to  build up to a point where you’ll earn a good income from them and as  a result you’ll need to be able to see yourself writing on that topic

for the long term.

Darren Rowse on the Future of Blogging: I think we’ll continue to see the collision of many different mediums into one. Video, Audio, Static Images, Blogging, Social Networking,  Bookmarking etc will continue to merge and evolve.

As you can see, Darren’s advice is still valuable today. It’s a formula that has worked for him for several years.

Twitter – Not Quitting Anytime Soon

This week I’ve been talking about time wasters. So far I’ve covered personal time wasters, email time savers, and my editorial calender.

Today Twitter.

This post will be real short. Twitter does waste some of my time. Some tweets on twitter are totally useless. Will this be a time waster I cut?

No.

Twitter sends a fair amount of blog traffic my way. Also I stay current on many of the blogs I enjoy via Twitter, which translates into less time spent clicking around, visiting my favorite blogs to see what’s new. Overall it’s a positive service with some time wasting qualities, but it gives enough back so that I feel it’s justified.

What do you think of your Twitter time?

Balancing Post Count

Reader comment / question:

“It annoys me when a blog has 15 or 20 posts a day. To me, it feels like the friend who forwards 15 chain emails a day and also sends 2 or 3 personal emails… I won’t name names, but I subscribe to a couple of blogs that do this. When I get too far behind in reading the posts in my reader, the first thing I do is go to those blogs and mark all their posts as read without reading them. I also tend to skim their posts more often than other blogs because more often than not there is only one or two good quality posts a day from those blogs and a whole lot of stuff that is uninteresting. The blogs I am thinking of all have many co-bloggers and appear to be network blogs.

Do you think there is a point where a blog posts too much in one day? If so, do you think this is usually a function of having too many co-bloggers? Of not exerting enough editorial control? Of…?”

What I think:

First this is a really good question, but I wonder why you’d have blogs in your feed that offer “a whole lot of stuff that is uninteresting” – that sounds dull. I’d delete blogs like that. Not knowing the background of the blogs I can’t say why they offer dull content. It could be too many bloggers, or bloggers who don’t know the topic well, or it could be any number of things. Their editor may be telling them what to write, or the bloggers hate their topic so they write garbage just to get posts out of the way. One way to know for sure is to ask – most blogs have contact pages. Jot off a quick email that says, you’d like to keep them in your feed but…

I don’t think a blog’s interest factor has to do with post count, because every post has the potential to be interesting. For example, The Blog Herald and Performacing both sometimes post often in one day, and I find the posts interesting enough to read; or I at least skim them all. There are other blogs that post much more than these two, like many celebrity blogs – for the people who like celebrity blogs, a lot of posts are a bonus. For someone like me, it would be torture to have them in my feed.

I think it’s more what the bloggers bring to the blog then the actual number of posts. They bring lots o’ junk, well, you end up with a junky blog. If they bring seven or two nicely done posts a day, you still end up with a nice useful blog either way.

Post count in general:

There’s a downside to too few posts. I’m currently working for a network that wants one post a day at each of their blogs, and in some cases less. I’ll be shocked if this blog network grows at even a normal pace. With one exception, I’ve never seen a blog grow well on less than two posts a day.

While I don’t think the number of posts alone can ruin a blog, I do think there is one potential downside to too many posts. Once you get past six posts a day, it’s hard to follow a blog. If a blog is hard to follow, it seems unlikely that you’ll connect with your readers. I like when I can easily keep up with a blog. For me personally that’s about five posts tops.

Post count is variable though. You have to find the perfect balance for each blog you write. Most blogs I write for seem to have a traffic cut-off, as in traffic stalls once you get past a certain number of posts a day. That number, in my experience is four or five posts per day. If you consistently receive the same amount of traffic when you write four posts or seven posts, then why write seven unless you have something magnificent to say? You can save it for tomorrow.

Good post content – no matter the post count:

I think that as long as you follow the “So what” rule that I wrote about at FWJ, then you’ll be fine. Some bloggers really can write endlessly and interestingly about a topic, some can’t. But that’s dependent on the blog’s topic, and the blogger’s knowledge base. If you’re only churning out mindless posts for the sake of a higher post count, and not because you actually have something to say, you’re not going to keep a good reader base for long. People do want to read something interesting at your blog.

I think we should open this question up though. Maybe a blog does look way worse to folks if there are too many posts.

What do you think everyone? “Do you think there is a point where a blog posts too much in one day?” If so, why do you think this is?