Today’s post was inspired by a piece from Jonathan Morrow, associate editor at Copyblogger. The piece, entitled how 2 blog if u suk at writin, is a motivational, feel-good article aimed at bloggers who are less than confident in their writing ability. While I encourage you to go read the entire article, I’ll sum up Morrow’s main thesis here:

If you’re a poor writer, don’t worry. Not everyone is born with the gift of writing. You can still be a successful blogger. You just need to work hard to keep things interesting and unique. Play to your other talents, and the writing won’t matter.

Now, it’s been just a year and 12 days since I took Skellie to task for suggesting that great writing doesn’t matter online. Nothing has changed since then. I’m a firm believer that content is king, and that good writing is the premier form of content online, and in blogs specifically.

Look. Confessions of a Pioneer Woman didn’t win Blog of the Year by having mediocre writing. Yes, Pioneer Woman’s pictures are great. But she’s a good writer, too. She keeps readers coming back, in part, because of her ability to turn a phrase.

The same is true for Darren at Problogger, Dooce and Morrow’s own Copyblogger. Even Cake Wrecks wouldn’t be as hilariously funny if Jen were a sucky writer. It also holds true for Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void, the only solid example Morrow uses of a highly successful blogger whose main attraction isn’t his writing.

Good writing hooks the reader and keeps them coming back for more. Conversely, poor writing detracts from the blogger’s own message.

I like the spirit of what Morrow is trying to do here, I really do. He wants to encourage bloggers who may not be the best writers, or who may not have confidence in their writing ability. In some ways, that’s exactly what I try to do here with every post. I want to help other Internet writers improve their craft (and their business).

But Morrow and I disagree about how best to serve other Internet writers and bloggers. Rather than encourage them to hone their craft, Morrow seems to be suggesting they develop a catchy gimmick. This is somewhat surprising, given that Morrow himself says that, rather than being born with a pen in hand, he devoted years to honing his craft. So, why wouldn’t he encourage other writers to do the same?

My message, instead, is this:

If you’re a poor writer, don’t worry. You can still be a successful blogger. You’ll need to work hard to hone your craft so that your writing accents and supports, rather than detracts from, your blog. The good news is that just about anyone can become a good writer with a little bit of hard work.

So, what do you think? Is good writing really necessary to have a good blog?

When I started The Writing Journey just over a year ago, this blog was something of an experiment. I’d run several blogs before, with relatively little success in terms of garnering subscribers. Some were personal blogs, devoted to a particular hobby. Others were attempts to blog in a certain niche area, in hopes of generating revenue via advertising or affiliate income.

The Writing Journey was different. Sure, I ran Adsense in the early days. And yes, I’ve found a handful of affiliate programs that I can really believe in to promote over time. But this blog was more about giving back: sharing my experiences as a professional writer, and helping other Internet writers achieve their dreams.

Through this blog, I’ve met many other Internet writers. I’ve formed business alliances, landed writing gigs, had the privilege of mentoring several writers, and just had an overall good time.

Unfortunately, late last year I let the passion slip a bit. Writing my regular blog post became something of a chore. I found myself struggling to find something more interesting, more useful, more inspiring than what I’d posted before.

A day or two without a post turned into a week, a week turned into a month, and a month turned into three. I broke the number one rule of blogging.

And what is the number one rule of blogging?

To blog successfully, you have to post consistently.

Now, I don’t feel too terribly bad about all of this; after all, this blog has primarily been a labor of love. Not blogging hasn’t horribly impacted my bottom line. Still, I’ve missed it. And, I’ve missed you, my readers.

I’ve also realized something: not every post has to be profound. Well-written, yes. Useful in one way or another, of course. But some of the most important lessons about being a professional writer are the simplest. It’s not nearly as important that I be clever in a post as it is that I post to begin with.

At any rate, without making any grand pronouncements of broad commitments, I do want to let you know I’m back. It’s been a long, cold winter, but I’ve missed you all. I hope to get back into the habit of consistently writing here, of interacting with you and helping you achieve your dreams, even as I’m living mine.

(I’ll be continuing with my series on how to start your freelance writing business on Monday, but I wanted to hold it off just through the weekend. I received an email yesterday from Yaro Starak regarding his Blog Mastermind program, and thought my readers might find this information valuable. Enjoy this message on behalf of Yaro.

DISCLAIMER: the links below are affiliate links. I do earn some money if you enroll in Blog Mastermind by clicking on them. However, I encourage you to enroll whether or not you do it via my links, as I think Yaro’s advice will prove extremely valuable if you have any interest whatsoever in making money from your blog.)

Unless you are an Australian you probably don’t know this.

The Australian dollar has dropped dramatically, from 95 cents US a few months ago, to about 68 cents US as I type this.

Why this matters to you is that Yaro Starak’s blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind, charges admission in Australian dollars.

I’ve already raved about this program before and if you don’t believe me, just do a search on Google for “Blog Mastermind Reviews” to see what other people are saying.

It’s the only program of it’s kind that teaches you how to make a full time living from blogging only part time, and is led by one of the best blog teachers I know of.

Already over a 1,000 people have taken part in the program, with many satisfied graduates earning good money from their blogs.

YOU CAN SAVE IF YOU ACT BEFORE MONDAY

If you paid for entry into the program right now with a credit card that is in US dollars, you would save roughly 32% off the entry fee, because the course fees are in Australian dollars.

If you ordered the $97 month for six months plan, your credit card statement would show about $66 as
long as the Aussie dollar remained where it is now.

For the $497 AUD prepaid package, where you get the entire program up front, the cost on your US card would show roughly $338.

Note of course these prices are subject to change based on the current exchange rates, but it doesn’t look like the Australian dollar will climb back up any time soon (but who knows!).

It really doesn’t matter though, because Yaro is changing his pricing from Monday and will be charging in American dollars then. So you only have until Monday to save.

You can join here.

When you go to the payment page you will see prices of $97 or $497 depending on what you choose.

Those prices are in Australian dollars, so the discount will show up if you pay with a US dollar credit card, assuming the Aussie dollar was still weaker when you ordered.

THE $97 MONTH PAYMENT PLAN IS GOING TOO

On Monday Yaro is also eliminating the $97 a month pricing plan. He said he does have plans to bring it back, but because of his bank and online shopping cart system, he can’t charge in USD for recurring subscriptions.

Until he changes his system or they upgrade the features, there won’t be a $97 a month option, only a $497 prepaid course option.

To put it in simple terms – If you want to join Blog Mastermind, the cheaper price deadline is Monday, so you better decide soon.

Here’s the order page.

Good luck with your blog and make sure you tell me what you think of Yaro’s course if you join.

(The following is a guest post from Philippe-Antoine Menard, the Chatty DM. Phil is a good friend who I had the pleasure of meeting in person at Gen Con this year. Like many of my other readers, Phil aspires to make his living writing. He’s got some great ideas about his niche, roleplaying games, as well as writing in general. Enjoy! – Bob)

I’m a Writer, because I blog or write Standard Operating Procedures for a Living.

I’m a Writer, because I’m a Dungeon Master and write adventures for my friends.

Late last summer, at the Gen Con gaming convention (One of the biggest in North America), I’ve met many awesome people from the Role Playing Game (RPG) industry (and others like myself, sitting at the edge of
it) and many of them are Writers.

I don’t know why they are Writers, but I’m a Writer because, given the opportunity to write about the things I love, I would do it 12 hours a day. Hell, I’d rather write than sleep!

Along with spending time with my family and gaming with my friends, writing makes me satisfied and happy. It brings me in the Flow: Time just stops existing while I spew stuff my mind makes up on the spot, my fingers flying on the keyboard at a speed that nearly matches my excited geek diatribes.

I’m a Writer, and I post my stuff on the Internet because I chose to ignore my doubts and stopped listening to my Inner Demons. I knew I had talent and I’ve managed to get a lot better  since I started blogging 1 year ago.

I would like to become a published author of RPG material. I’d love to write the sequel to Robin Laws’
Rules of Game Mastering. I’d go absolutely geek-crazy to see my name on a Dungeon/Dragon/Kobolds Quarterly (RPG magazines) article.

If there was a way to make a decent living out of it, I’d quit my job in 5 minutes and never look back.

Thing is, in the RPG industry, gamers won’t pay 400$ for a printed game system. While some would spend it for getting a graphics cards just to play this One computer Game, you won’t see this happening in the
RPG industry.

Writers are paid like crap and amateur writer/fans often give out their work for free.

That’s not freaking fair but that’s life. I understand why it’s like that and thank god that the people in the industry are so nice. Quite often, just having a quick chat (or better yet a game) with a designer you admire makes up for all the work you poured into that adventure you wrote to run for their company at a game convention.

I don’t have the courage to leave my current job and jeopardize my family’s security to pursue that dream. I do it in my free time and I make plans, dark, sinister plans.

You Writers deserve better.

That’s why I bought a new copy of Mutants and Masterminds, that’s why I bought a Harley Stroh (a young rising Adventure Writer) D&D adventure at Gen Con . That’s why I gave Wolfgang Baur money to write a D&D adventure and why I bought his Kobold Guide to Game Design.

Guys, you may be paid peanuts, but you deserve all the support you can get.

Same thing goes for the talented, gutsy bloggers out there. You deserve more recognition for the awesome RPG stuff you’ve been writing these last few years.

My latest crazy idea is be to find a way for RPG bloggers to get access to better ad revenues and explore ways to be paid for the good material they put out. So far, things are promising.

Guys, look at what Joss Whedon (Creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Wolfgang Baur are doing and find something to break the current system.

Therein lies the solution, or so I would like to believe.

Toying with perceptions, making truth out of lies and unmaking the impossible, isn’t what being a Writer is all about?

Good morning, everyone! It’s a bit early here in mid-Michigan, and it seems to be a perfect morning for just a little bit of navel gazing.

I’ve spent some time thinking, ever since the Pen Men took their little blogging vacation during the summer, about how this blog has evolved. When I started The Writing Journey, I wanted to offer Internet writers advice about writing online, finding gigs, using article directories and the overall writing process.

Everything was humming along just fine until a wrote a post called Bang Your Gong: A Call For Action From The Internet Writing Community. For me, that post started a process where I really had to think long and hard about how I was going to help Internet writers achieve their dreams; getting my vision, discovering my voice, establishing my brand.

Since then, I’ve even started coaching a handful of writing clients. This program is a stopgap measure, designed to allow me to help other writers while I’m in the process of developing my membership-based writers training program.

Because my freelance business has grown by leaps and bounds, I find myself constantly juggling tasks, and putting one against another. When that happens, as anyone else in the freelance business can tell you, some aspects of the business model are bound to suffer.

For me, the part that’s suffered has been my blog. My posting frequence has been rather sporatic over the summer, becuase of all these growing pains.

I’m not apologizing or complaining, mind you; I’m not Darren Rowse, and I don’t intend to be. My business model doesn’t rely on my blog for success, and daily posting has never been a hard and fast rule for me.

However, in order to help other writers achieve their dreams, I feel like a more consistent posting schedule would be in order at The Writing Journey.

All that being said, I’ve decided to follow the lead of the Men with Pens and take a bit of a break.  I’m not going away forever, not by any means. I am, however, going to take the next 11 days off.

In that time, I’ll be working up some new content for the blog, as well as spending some extra time on my membership-based writer’s training program. When I return on September 15, 2008, I’ll have a more regular posting schedule for you, with posts three times a week.

Now, I know I’ll be missed while I’m gone. Try not to take it too hard Enjoy yourselves, out there elsewhere in the ether, but be sure to come back on the 15th and we’ll all get reacquainted.

I don’t make a bunch of money from my blog. In fact, if I have $50 a month from affiliate sales in a month, I throw a party.

A very tiny party. Hey, it’s only $50.

Still, my blog is one of the most profitable pieces in my business model. How is that possible?

In short, I get a ton of freelance writing work from my blog. Here’s how:

I get clients through blog-based social networking

One of my biggest clients is one of my blog readers. She followed the blog for a long time, and we eventually struck up some conversations on Twitter. After a while, she trusted me well enough to offer me some writing assignments. For the past several months, I’ve brought in anywhere from one third to one half of my income from this single client.

I use my blog to showcase my best material

When I using a bidding site to compete for freelance writing gigs, the competition can be pretty fierce. After an initially strong run on one particular site, we saw our bid acceptance rates drop dramatically. We couldn’t figure out why it happened that way. Eventually, though, we discovered that bids we put in that included a link to The Writing Journey sold better – by a factor of about 5 – than bids that didn’t link to The Writing Journey. This was the case across the board, whether it was for an ebook, blogging, website copy, or even technical writing gigs.

I earn credibility and prestige through my blog

Without The Writing Journey, I probably wouldn’t have a post at Freelance Switch, and almost certainly wouldn’t be a regular at Freelance Folder. I’m not a superstar, by any means. But my blog is strong enough so as to support a reputable presence around the blogosphere. This, in turn, leads to credibility in my writing business.

So, what about you? How do you use your blog to support your freelance writing business?

There are plenty of tips and tricks I could give you about how to get more traffic to your blog.

And there are a lot of folks who can do that a heck of a lot better than I can.

The fact is, however, that getting traffic to your blog is only half of the challenge. Once a reader is on your blog, you’ve got to give them a reason to stay.

There are plenty of things you can do to increase your readership. You can hold a contest, for example, that asks readers to subscribe in order to enter. You can publish an Ebook and offer free to subscribers. These techniques are certainly valid ways to increase your blog readers, and they’ll almost certainly give your blog an immediate subscriber boost.

However, there’s only one thing you can do to guarantee people will come back to your blog again and again:

Write well.

Good writing is the key to successful blogging. Yes, all of those promotional techniques, from social media to article marketing, are important. They get folks to your blog in the first place. But good writing is infinitely more important in the long run. Why?

Good writing is pleasing to read.

According to studies, Internet surfers have horribly short attention spans. If you write poorly, your reader won’t understand what you write and they won’t enjoy it, either. Good blog writing means putting a smile on your reader’s face and getting your message across clearly.

That’s not all, though. There’s more to it. A readable style is only one part of good blog writing.

Good writing connects with the reader.

This concept applies to both the style of your writing and the content of your writing. To keep readers coming back, you have to write in such a way that they feel connected with you. You can’t write above their level, and you can’t write in the third person. In addition, you have to write about something they’re interested in.

Making those sorts of connections with your readers helps to establish a real relationship, one that involves trust. In fact, that brings us to the next point about good writing:

Good writing engenders trust.

There’s quite a bit of talk about “authority” in the blogosphere. Ultimately, authority is really about a trust relationship between you and your reader. You have something to say, and your reader trusts that it is both true and reliable. It really isn’t any more complex than that.

There are many paths to authority, too, regardless of what some of the experts might tell you. Getting readers to trust you starts, however, with your writing. You demonstrate your authority on a topic with good writing.

So, what do you think? Does good writing still matter online?

As you all are well aware, I’m not in the “Make Money Online” blog crowd. Like I said the other day, I blog when I’ve got something I think will be useful to other writers. I write about common mistakes, ways to improve your writing, and even about some of the online writing tools that I use.

I tend to focus on the “how to be a better writer” and “how to be a better freelancer” side of things, rather than “how to make money online.” There are plenty of folks out there who are willing to tell you how to make money online, I don’t need to do it.

Unfortunately, a lot of those folks are little more than charlatans and thieves. There are lots of bad guys, and just a handful of good guys. One of the good guys is Yaro Starak. Yaro’s free Blog Profits Blueprint was in many ways the inspiration for this blog, and is a good part of the reason that this blog is so successful today.

Yaro’s got a new free 30-minute video, just released today, called “Conversion Blogging.” The video focuses on leveraging your blogging efforts into a full-time income. In the video, he talks about how to get away from becoming a “page view slave” who makes pennies a day on their blog, and making a real income.

Obviously, the video is a way for Yaro to introduce you to his blog mentoring program, in the same way that the Blog Profits Blueprint does. But even if you just watch the video and read the blueprint, I promise you’ll find something that’s worthwhile, that you can apply to your blogging efforts. Even if you’re like me and use your blog more to get clients than you do to make money, Yaro’s got plenty of sound ideas about generating blog traffic that you should listen to. On top of that, his ideas about “pillar content” are especially insightful and tremendously useful, particularly if you’re just starting out blogging.

Give it a whirl, and then feel free to come back and let me know what you think about it.

It’s been quiet around here lately. Why is that?

Blogging, for me, isn’t as much about getting thousands of subscribers (although I’m well on my way to four digits as of this morning) and it isn’t even about making a bunch of money (though I do get some affiliate sales through products I recommend and some clients through my services page).

For me, this blog is about helping you achieve your dreams.

When I first started blogging, I was of the mind that I needed to post every day. In fact, on my gaming blog, I was posting two or three times a day.

That turned out to be a bit pointless. It didn’t help me get subscribers, and it didn’t make me any money.

So, with The Writing Journey, I’ve tried all along to only post when I’m inspired. That means, sometimes, creating a series that inspires me to keep going, like the gong series or the food series.

At other times, it means the blog sits silent, like it has for the past week.

Life gets in the way of blogging, and sometimes you send all your inspiration elsewhere for a few days.

What’s my point here?

Simply this: while I have some feelings of regret for not having posted in a week, they are more to do with the interaction I get with my readers in the comments section than anything else.

I don’t do the “sorry I haven’t posted in a week” bit. While I understand what prompts folks to make those posts, it also comes off as egotistical. While I believe you will benefit every time I post, fact is that your writing career isn’t going to go down the tubes because I don’t blog for 7 days.

I’m not particularly worried about not having posted for a week.I’ve never unsubscribed from a blog because they didn’t post enough (unless it was a month between posts). I have unsubscribed when they continually post filler material, however.

There are varying schools of thought on posting frequency. For myself, I tend not to worry much about it. You all keep coming back, even when I’m gone for a few days. For that, I’ll say “thank you,” and try to return the favor by posting more frequently the next week. Not out of obligation or fear, but because I want to interact with you and because I genuinely want to help you achieve your dreams.

photo credit: tomsaint11

I’m in my fifth month here at The Writing Journey, so I suppose it’s time to reflect a bit. Five months isn’t that long, unless you consider the fact that the vast majority of blogs fold by the end of their third month. So, I’m tickled to still be here in month five, and I both excited and humbled by the success I experience here.

I get asked, on a fairly regular basis, questions about blogging, about starting a blog, and about how to run a blog. I take this as a compliment.

One of the most common sorts of questions has to do with starting other blogs. Should the blogger, for example, start a separate blog for each of his interest areas, or should he write about all of those areas in one blog?

I’m not Darren Rowse, so I can’t give you the professional blogger’s opinion on the matter. I can tell you about the journey I’ve taken in blogging, though, and how I got to where I’m at today.

The beginning blogs

I blogged on and off in a casual way for a couple of years before I got serious about blogging. I started a couple of blogs in mid-2003. I updated them sporadically, blogging daily for a week or two and then not posting again for a couple of months. These blogs were mostly personal, and aimed more at communicating with my friends and family more than anything else. There’s nothing wrong with those blogs, if that’s what you want. But that sort of blog isn’t going to build a large base of readers.

Getting serious about blogging

You would think that, as a professional Internet writer, I’d have started blogging sooner. Truth is, I was perfectly happy writing my web content. My clients weren’t looking for bloggers, so I didn’t feel the need to blog.

When I first got serious about blogging, I ran five different blogs – all in different interest areas. It was too much to keep on top of, even devoting a portion of my workday. Unfortunately, none of them were really growing.

The Writing Journey

Somewhere along the way I discovered the Blog Profits Blueprint. I’ve raved about this document elsewhere, so I won’t bother doing it again here. Suffice it to say that Yaro’s words inspired and motivated me in a big way.

Among other things, Yaro helped me to figure out that I was spreading myself way too thin. I needed to focus my energies in on making just one great blog.

That’s when I started The Writing Journey. I found myself spending more and more time on WJ, and less time on my other blogs. Within a month or so, I’d stopped updating my other blogs.

That’s when WJ really started to grow. And it’s grown exponentially since then. Every day I have a new record number of RSS subscribers. I firmly believe that wouldn’t be the case if I’d tried to keep all 5 blogs going. I also don’t think it would be the case if I’d tried to combine all of the different interest areas into one. The more focused I become on my topic, the better the blog does.

I picked back up my gaming blog around a month ago. I’ve been updating it regularly and applying what I’ve learned about promoting blogs at The Writing Journey to that blog. It’s growing faster now than it ever has, too. But The Writing Journey is still my flagship, and it’s where I devote the lion’s share of my blogging time.

The short answer

So, the short answer to the question is this: in my experience, focusing on a single blog with a single niche creates the best scenario for success. Once that blog is humming along, add another if you have the time. Don’t neglect the first one, though, and if you have to choose between them, stay with the first.

———-

Many of you readers have been at the blogging game much longer than I have. What would you add to the discussion of running multiple blogs?

A while back, I asked the question, “What is Your Dream?” I talked a little bit about my dream in that post, and asked my readers to do the same. I have to say, I’m amazed at the response. Everyone who commented has something they want to accomplish as a writer. Here is just a sample of the comments:

Tom Vanderwell: ” I’d like to enjoy what I do and provide a good living for my family at the same time.”

Brett Legree: “I want to write a book about my wife and children. And I’m doing it, right now – so I guess I’m living my dream.”

Kameron: “My dream is to be a full-time novelist. I’ve gotten sidetracked with other projects and interests over the last two years, but I’m refocusing on that original dream once more.”

Pamela Weir: “My dream is to add value and change one person’s thinking.”

James Chartrand: “I have a dream that me and my family will always be happy and be able to continue to pursue their dreams.”

Every comment on that post has something inspiring and interesting in it. I’ve gone back to those comments many times as a source of motivation, and I’m sure I’ll do so again. What does all of this have to do with Meme week here at The Writing Journey? I want to start my own meme: The Dream Meme.

The rules are simple:

• Write a short paragraph describing your dream. What is it that you want to accomplish? Your dream doesn’t have to be related to your blog, though it can be. It can be anything – what you dream for your family, your career or anything else you want out of life.
• Identify three tangible goals you can accomplish in the next year that will bring you closer to fulfilling that goal.
• Describe one action – just one – that you will take, today, to work toward your goals.
• Link back to this post, if you please.
• Feel free to post a link in the comments back to your post.
• Tag specific folks or all of your readers – however you prefer.

To start it off, here’s mine:

My Dream

I want to make enough from my writing to support my girls through college, pay for their weddings and provide for my retirement. I want to do this managing my own business and writing what I want to write, rather than working for others. As part of this dream, I want to help other writers get where they want to be, as well. I want to do all of this while maintaining high writing and business ethics standards.

My Goals

In the next year, I will:

• Increase my overall income by 20%
• Set aside $1,500 for each of my girl’s future
• Open my writer mentoring program

Today

Today, I’m going to spend one hour after I’m done with my paying work to outline a plan for my mentoring program.

———-

Consider yourselves tagged.

To help you along, enjoy a little Aerosmith:

As part of Meme Week, I want to give you a link post via the Once Upon A Bloggy Night meme. Here are the rules of this one:

• Make a list of blogs you read. You can use either the name of the blog, the domain name (which is sometimes different), or a mix of both.
• Arrange the words into a simple story. Pad as needed to create a real tale. (The story doesn’t need to have anything to do with the topics or theme of the blogs you’re linking to, fyi.)
• Use one of my “Once Upon a Bloggy Night” logos — the large one here or the small one here — whenever you post the story on your blog. (Please host the logo on your own server or your Photobucket/Flickr account — thanks! Email me using my contact form if you need help figuring out the details. I’m glad to help.)
• Include a link back to this post, if you don’t mind.
• Visit the site that inspired me, the Ettarose-edgeofsanity blog and let that author know you enjoyed this idea. Leave a comment on a Tuesday link love story there!
• Then please leave a comment on this post so we’ll have a central place where a list of all of your wonderful stories can be found.
• Help spread the word by emailing each of the bloggers whose sites you mention in your story, inviting them to join the fun.

This one was hard for me. I have more than 400 blogs in my feeds. No, I don’t read them all daily. However, I do try to read the lion’s share at least once a week. If you’re not here, it doesn’t mean I don’t read you regularly, OK? K. So, here goes:

It was just six weeks ago that my brother and I would spend all day trying to escape reality with roleplaying games. I was always the Dungeon Master, and I was a verry Chatty DM. My brother would play a rogue, and my sister Angie would play a Gnome with a pet Grey Wolf. We ate chips and sushi every day, which rocked; the nights were even more Remarkable.

Well, it finally happened. My brother traded his sword for a pen, bought a ’37 Rhodester, got a job Getting Paid to Write Online, and moved away. It surprised me, because I didn’t know my brother didn’t know How Not to Write. Well, needless to say, it was hard for me to move Forward. It just wasn’t the same, playing RPGs with my sister. I became something of a spiritual tramp, and didn’t have the PoeWar to move on.

One day, I finally called my brother on the phone. “Brother,” I said, “is there any way you can Write From Home?”

“Bob,” he said, “No. you’re just going to have to get along without me.

I was devastated. Losing all hope of ever roleplaying again. So, I joined a monastery and became a Friar.

———-

I talked last week about creating a useful link post, and about how doing so can add value to the conversation in a niche. Is this a useful link post? I don’t know. It was fun to write, I do know that. Sometimes, you just have to write a post for the sheer enjoyment, I think.

I’ll end the Meme Theme next time with a meme of my own making. C’mon back and see what I’ve cooked up!

Hiya.

I’m postponing Meme week by a day, which means Thursday’s Meme will post on Friday, and Friday’s will post on Saturday. You won’t want to miss Saturday’s, it’s a good one for sure.

Why the interruption, you ask? Well, my new friend Daniel Smith, he of Smithereens blog, is having a contest called Can You Put the Wit in Twitter?

Go take a look at it. He’s even bamboozled me into offering up a prize.

Good luck to you all!

It’s been nearly a month coming, so I hope my friend Sandie Law at Geeked Off will forgive me. At least it didn’t take me as long for this one as it did for Amy’s from yesterday!

OK, so here are the rules for this one:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to read your blog.

Honestly, I’m hesitant to do this one. After all, I gave you 32 things yesterday, and you can also find another 7 “interesting things about me” linked from my About page. That’s way too many things. I considered a couple of cheesy options, including:

• Randomly picking 8 from the 39 existing things, making them truly 8 random things.
• Post a link to the 8 Most Common Internet Writing Mistakes and telling you that I’ve done every one of them.

I really didn’t want to cop out entirely, though. After all, Matt did 16 random things just to show us all up. I also thought about making it 8 relevant things, but it’s been done. I can’t even talk about my sister doing yoga, since I’m an only child.

So, what to do? Overload you with things? Not do the meme?

I think I found a solution. I’ve given you 8 random links in this post to enjoy.

———-

Here’s where I’m going to break meme form. I’m of a mind that the best memes will reproduce themselves. I hate putting pressure on anyone to do a meme, and I fear the rejection of a meme being denied. Grab this one if you want, just let me know so I can follow along.

Or, If you’d prefer not to do the entire meme, you can tell me 1 random thing about you in the comments below!

photo credit: LaMenta3

I told you yesterday that I’d give you my answer to the meme question. As you can tell from the title, I do indeed meme.

The consensus in the comments was that selective meme-ing is the best approach.  I suppose I agree with that.  In general, you want to add value to the conversation.  Some memes add value, some don’t.

I prefer the first type, but sometimes do the second type, too.

It took me some time to come to this decision. I was worried, for a while, that doing these fun-but-silly activities would cost me readers or, even worse, cost me business. I’ve come to terms with those concerns, however.

As far as the professionalism question goes, it occurred to me: my blog is plenty personal, intentionally so. It’s part of the brand. Doing memes isn’t going to hurt my business. In fact, it shows instead that I’m part of a blogging community, and that I actively participate in the medium.

Now, some memes are silly, and add little value.  Today’s is probably in that category.  Tomorrow’s is, too.  Hang in there, though.  Thursday and Friday should be fun, and a great way to finish the week for us all.

So, without any further delay, I offer my first meme of the week. This one comes from Amy at Earnest Parenting. Amy is a good friend, who actually introduced Angie Pangie and I to the work of one of my blogging mentors, Yaro Starak. She tagged me way back in April, so I thought I’d start with her meme.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share 4 things in these themes.
4. Tag 4 random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

So, here we go, my lists of 4s:

4 jobs I have had

• Dishwasher. My first job.
• Bartender at Chi-Chi’s. Really, I mostly just operated a blender.
• Telemarketer (I’m so sorry. It only lasted a week.)
• Order taker for a designer clothing company.

4 movies I can watch over and over

• Lord of the Rings (Considering all 3 movies as a unified whole here.)
• Empire Strikes Back – Best of the series.
• Casablanca. I’m a hopeless romantic and want to be Bogart.
• Iron Man. By far the best comic book movie ever, bar none.

4 places I have lived

• Davison, Michigan. Born and lived there until age 7.
• Linwood, Michigan. Grew up there, came back after I was married. Still live there.
• Marion, Indiana. College. Loved it. The perfect Midwestern town.
• Indianapolis, Indiana. My favorite home. Not too big, not too small.

4 TV shows I love

• Battlestar Galactica. *I* am one of the final five.
• Reaper. Best new show this past season.
• The Office. That’s what she said.
• American Idol. A guilty pleasure. David Cook rocks.

4 places I have been on vacation

• Florida. Twice in college, once with the family.
• Paradise, Michigan. Great camping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
• Atlantic City, New Jersey. My last great bachelor trip. I may have drank a lot. I don’t remember.
• Chicago. My 2nd favorite Midwestern city.

4 of my favorite dishes

• Tater Tot Casserole. It’s like Shepard’s pie. Sorta.
• Tuscany Glazed Turduken in Hollandaise.
• Pizza. Duh.
• Anything Angie Pangie makes.

4 web sites I visit daily

• Escaping Reality. Only because I’m addicted.
• The Chatty DM. Love his take on all things gaming-related.
• The Drudge Report. A full menu of news from dozens of sources.
• Player vs. Player. Scott Kurtz and his funny-ness. Beware the pandas.

4 places I would rather be now

• Gen Con. Only 2 1/2 months!
• Camping. This is going to be a busy summer, don’t think we’re going to get to do much.
• England. My dream vacation.
• On a beach. I’m not especially particular. Any one will do.

4 bloggers I am tagging

Here’s where I’m going to break meme form. I’m of a mind that the best memes will reproduce themselves. I hate putting pressure on anyone to do a meme, and I fear the rejection of a meme being denied. Grab this one if you want, just let me know so I can follow along!

Or, If you’d prefer not to do the entire meme, you can pick one or more of the “4 Things” topics above and put them in the comments.

photo credit: tanakawho

One quick note. For those of you who are interested, I had the privilege of doing an interview with Harrison McLeod of Men with Pens on his view of gaming and the new creative writing RPG project over at Escaping Reality. Check it out over at my gaming blog.

The Internet is an odd place; the blogosphere even more so. We have our own language, our own technology, and even our own little games. At times, it can even seem as thought we have this strange community, isolated from “normal” folks.

One of the distinguishing marks of the blogosphere, in particular, is the idea of the meme. By “meme,” I’m not talking about a trope, like LeRoy Jenkins or Niebu. Rather, I’m talking about the “Pass this around” meme, where one blogger writes about something, tags a bunch of other bloggers who write about that same thing, and then those bloggers tag new folks. And so on, and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

Here is the question I face, however: If your blog is an extension of your business, can a meme affect your credibility? I’ve heard arguments on both sides of this question. I’ve seen some fairly high-profile bloggers whose blog is an extension of their business do memes. I’ve also seen some of those types of folks swear off doing memes.

I’ve never done a meme on this blog, although I’ve done them on my hobby and personal blogs.

But, I’m curious what you all think? Do you meme? Do you worry that it affects your credibility when you do?

I’ll give you my answer tomorrow, but let’s discuss it today, shall we?

* For your enjoyment: LeRoy Jenkins, courtesy of YouTube:

I made a point the other day that linking to other blogs is an integral part of being useful to your readers.  Specifically, I mentioned this in the context of the link post, and how we tend to put up link posts on low-traffic days.  While this isn’t true for everyone (John at PoeWar has link posts every day, for example) many of us follow that convention.

At any rate, an interesting discussion broke out in the comments of that post.  Here are a couple of the reactions:

I link out a lot – just about every post I think, but I don’t write that many “links posts”, mainly because I find them dull as a reader.

I often skip over them unless they’re well written (tempting me to explore) Anything with more than 5 links makes me think there’s no way I’ve got time to explore them. So I skip to something else. – Joanna Young

I love to link to other bloggers simply because I LOVE a good blog. I get almost as excited about finding a great new (to me) blog, as I do about a really good book, and I just can’t resist the desire to share it. – Lisa Wilder

Now, I think the value in linking to other bloggers within the text of a regular article is without dispute. Linking to another blog and then adding your own thoughts and commentary helps to carry on the big conversation.  But, what about Link posts?

There are several characteristics that can make link posts useful:

Useful link posts provide context.

Link posts are most useful when there is some context to those articles.  Offering your reader a link with a headline probably gives them little more than what they already have from their feed reader.  If the headline wasn’t interesting enough when they scanned their feeds, odds are it isn’t going to be interesting enough in your links post. By providing context, even if that’s just a few sentences, you describe the value the reader gets from clicking the link.

Useful link posts have useful links.

It’s not enough to describe what’s on the other end of the link. You’ve got to make sure that the page you’re describing is indeed interesting and useful to your reader.  This means that, no matter how close you and I might be as colleagues or friends, if I don’t write anything decent in a given week you need to leave me out of your link post.  Obligation links don’t serve anyone.  If you link to a weak post of mine, the odds that the reader will click through next week decrease.

Useful link posts center around a theme.

In many cases, simply keeping the links related to your niche is enough.  However, the most useful links posts will hit on several articles that touch a related topic or question. This puts the meta-talk in context and allows your reader to get the big picture and carry on the conversation.  In some cases, a themed link post may become the new hub of discussion for the particular topic.

 Useful link posts consider length.

A useful link post might be as small as four or five links, or it may contain several hundred.  Each of those two extremes has its place.  A post with four links and a paragraph or two about each is not that different from a regular blog article. This sort of link post relies on you to add value to the links, giving them context and telling the reader what you think about the links in depth. Short link posts are likely to create more conversation.

On the other hand, you might create a master link list of every post you can on blog traffic or grammar rules.  Those link posts become enduring posts, rarely read in their entirety but often referenced.  In some cases a post like my 178 Ways to Improve Your Internet Writing, while not intended as a links post, can fall into this category as well.

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Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that other forms of link posts or that link posts that don’t follow these rules can’t work.  What I am saying is this: making your link posts more useful increases your value to your readers.  It also increases the likelihood that more readers will click through those links, positioning you as a potentially significant source of traffic to the blogs you’re linking.

The more I read about blog promotion, the more I begin to think that some folks are missing the point altogether.

Heck, even I miss it, from time to time, and yet it is one of the main themes of this blog.

What is it we miss?  Usefulness.  Blogs are supposed to be useful to their readers.  That’s one of the big things that differentiates them from simple static SEO websites.  We’re all about building loyal readers, customers and clients by providing something of value to our readers, right?  At least, that’s what we say we’re about.

But sometimes, we get off track.  Feed stats and page views take precedence over providing true value.

Instead of helping other Internet writers to achieve their dreams, I focus a little bit too much on achieving my own dreams.  In doing so, I work against my readers and, paradoxically, my dreams as well.

Take, for example, the idea of the links post.  Everyone knows that it’s a good thing to link to other blogs.  Not only that, there are almost always a large number of posts out there that our readers would find useful, maybe even more useful than our regular posts.

So, we collect a week or two worth of useful links and put them up on… Tuesday, right? 

Nope.  Links posts never go up on Tuesday through Thursday – those are typically our highest traffic days.  No, we offer links when our traffic is at it’s slowest, preferably on a Sunday afternoon.

Why is this a problem?

photo credit: stee

In our quest to promote our blogs, we wind up being useful, but not too useful when it comes to pointing out other great resources.  We also make the conversation on our blog that much more narrow and secluded by not engaging with other bloggers in our niche.

OK, so you move your links post to Wednesdays.  Good form.  Promote the pack and, in turn, the pack will promote you.  Some of your readers will even remember who gave them all of those awesome links.  That’s the first way to increase your blog’s usefulness:

Make links to other blogs a top priority.

What else, though?  What can you do to make your blog more useful?

James Chartrand from Men with Pens asked recently, on Twitter, if bloggers ought to be allowed a posting vacation.  I’ll leave it to James to gather and analyze the results of his little poll, but it got me thinking:

How often do you I post something truly useful on my blog?  Let’s face it: sometimes, you post for the sake of posting, especially if you missed a day or three.  Your forced content winds up being, in many cases, less than useful.

There are ways around this, of course.  You can do like I did on Friday and count on your readers to make the post useful.  (Which you all did, and for which I’m grateful.)  You can’t do this all the time, though, or your readers might just catch on and take the conversation elsewhere.

So, how do we apply this idea?

Only post useful content, even if that means posting once a week.

A revolutionary idea, I know.  Will it cost readers?  Maybe.  but so will the alternative, I think.  Some of the biggest bloggers post on an irregular schedule, so daily posting isn’t a hard and fast rule.

There’s something else that can make your blog more useful.  This one should be obvious, but I think it is so obvious that it becomes easy to miss.

photo credit: goodrob13

Have you ever tried to read a blog with light gray writing on a white background?  I’m 35 years old.  I’m not old, but I’m no spring chicken.  Reading gray on white is a pain in the ass.  I can’t make it out.  Same goes for that tiny print that the kids want to use these days. 

I know, I know.  Get off my lawn.

Seriously, though, your blog layout and design is an important part of being useful to your readers. If you make it difficult for readers to find archives or don’t offer a reasonably easy method of navigation, you’re making their job harder.  At some point, readers will decide that it is not worth the extra work to find out what they were looking for.

Now, I’m not a designer.  The “WJ” badge at the top of my blog is evidence of that fact.  But, I do what I can to make my blog easy on the eyes and easy to get around, and I do that by trusting my instincts but also asking for advice. 

That’s another way to make your blog more useful:

Make readability and navigation priorities in your blog design.

Do what you can.  If you have a crappy “WJ” badge until you are willing to invest in a better banner, then at least make sure people can read your blog.

So, what else? 

If I had to add a 4th way to make your blog useful, it would be this: 

Foster a true conversation with your readers.

I don’t need to tell you how this works.  You already know the drill.  Put something in the comments and I’ll write back.  Let’s do this one together, shall we?  

What do you think?  How can you increase your blog’s usefulness?

(Good morning, all! I’m enjoying a sunny weekend here in Michigan with my family. In addition to mowing the lawn and planting some flowers, I’ll be setting up the pool for the summer. The kids are majorly geeked!

I’ll be back on Monday, but in the meantime enjoy a useful, if not necessarily writing-related, article from professional blogger and blog mentor, Yaro Starak.)

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank, you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the Internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet marketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion – your stories – and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously, you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.

Blogs, and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

I’m so excited to tell you about something that I just couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey has been one of the biggest influences on the blogging side of my freelance career.  In fact, the name “Writing Journey” was inspired by Yaro.  Yaro’s web site has over 25,000 RSS subscribers, and he talks about how he made more than $6,000 in one month by blogging.  After reading about his success with blogging, I knew I had to give it a shot.  Every bit of advice I’ve read from Yaro has been pure gold.

An integral part of Yaro’s program is the Blog Profits Blueprint.  Yaro offers the Blueprint free of charge, and it contains enough advice to get you started on the path to blogging success.  Here’s the link to the newest version of the Blueprint, hot off the (digital) presses:

Click here to download the Blog Profits Blueprint

The Blueprint doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about successful blogging.  In fact, if you’ve already got 1,000 or more subscribers, there probably isn’t much for you there.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t download it and give it a look, I’m saying that you’ve probably already mastered the strategies and tactics he covers in the Blueprint.

Yaro is also in the process of launching the next go-around of his Blog Mastermind mentoring program.  I haven’t participated in the program, but I know of at least two other bloggers (both more successful than I am, so far) who have been through the program and they can’t say enough good things about it.  I’m going to check with them and see if we can’t get a guest post or two talking about their experiences with Blog Mastermind.  I’m comfortable recommending the mentoring program to you based on the quality of the Blueprint, the quality of Yaro’s blogging advice at Entrepreneur’s Journey, and the results I’ve personally seen from them.

I especially like the fact that Yaro, unlike some high-profile bloggers, really seems to care about writing quality content.  He is constantly banging the gong about “adding value” to your blogging, and making your blogging useful to others.  Yaro probably spends more time on marketing and monetization than I would, but I’m not a blogging writer – I’m a writing writer.

Anyways, as part of the launch, Yaro’s offered some useful articles to prospective members.  The article that follows is his.  Please note that any links to Yaro’s sites are affiliate links.

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10 Blog Traffic Tips

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else”s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that”s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that”s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger”s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it”s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it”s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it”s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it”s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it”s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com