Posts filed under 'Blogging'
I generally try and take my weekends off (even though I still sneak a look at my traffic stats a few times throughout the days) but I’m wondering if any of you do the same.
Working at home gives us a lot of freedom over when our work hours are, but I find that the days (weekdays and weekends) are more of the same than if I worked out of the home. For instance, I don’t look forward to Fridays as much as most people. My work is AT home so I can’t exactly get away from it. Even when I’m relaxing on the couch with a movie or a book, I can still see the computer out of the corner of my eye and there’s always that nagging feeling like I should be writing something.
Even so, I try and take some well-deserved “me time” which is usually on the weekends so that my leisure time coincides with my friends’ and family’s leisure time. However, I see a lot of my fellow mamas on the web are still diligently writing and posting.
There’s always the auto post feature in Wordpress that allows you to write a post and have Wordpress automatically submit it for you at a later date and time, but I’m not using it today. It’s Saturday and I should be spending time with my family. Instead, I’m sitting here with about 20 tabs open in Firefox and 3 posts on the go.
How about you?
June 14th, 2008
I was reading Yaro’s blog today (he’s a total cutie!) over at Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and noticed that he offers a bonus copy of his book “How To Start An Internet Business & Make Your First $1,000 Online” for readers who subscribe to his RSS feed.
Now, I will freely admit that my RSS subscriber numbers are so embarrassingly low that I might as well say they’re nonexistent. For the longest time, it was a struggle just to manage one post a week (or a month!) to this blog. Now that I’m posting more frequently, I can focus more on increasing readership and RSS subscribers. That’s why I’ve been keeping my eye out for ideas like this.
Anyhoo, I just thought that Yaro’s bonus offer was an interesting and cool tactic to attract new RSS subscribers. It isn’t a new tactic, but it’s one of the few times I’ve seen it implemented.
If you’re looking for ways to increase your blog readership through RSS, this is one way to do it. BloggingTips.com has a post with a few more good ideas too.
June 3rd, 2008
I just tried to log in to Twitter and I saw this.
“Thanks for noticing”?
I couldn’t help NOT noticing! But thanks for making me smile.
And yes, I know that most of you have seen this page a million times (due to Twitter’s infamous reputation of being down all the time) but as you may well know, I’m extremely behind the times.
I wonder if Twitter’s demise is imminent.
May 30th, 2008
Since I upgraded my Wordpress blogs to version 2.5 I’ve been having problems uploading images. I’d select the file to upload but when it went through the “crunching” process it would give me an HTTP error. Frustrating as hell!
I did a search on the Wordpress forum and on Google and came up with no solutions that worked for me until I found a post that mentioned the “Flexible-upload” plugin.
I’m super lazy when it comes to blogging (as you can probably tell if you’ve been a regular reader) so I haven’t done much with using plugins or additional features, but I’m kicking myself for not using this one earlier. Not only does it fix the http error for me, but you can add multiple images which is extremely handy if you use images a lot in your posts.
I know a lot of other people are having image uploading issues - even with version 2.5.1 - but hopefully this plugin will fix it for them as well.
May 6th, 2008
Have you ever started writing a post and then left it to finish at a later date? Maybe you had to do some more research, maybe you were waiting on some information from someone, maybe you were feeling uninspired and needed to wait until you could finish the post with a proper bang.
I always write my posts in Notepad, then copy and paste them into my Wordpress editor once they’re finished. When I don’t finish the post I’m working on because of any of the above reasons, I save it and store it in my “to do” folder on my desktop.
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of random bits of posts all over my hard drive and I just realized today how extremely stupid that is.
Why haven’t I been saving them as DRAFTS in my Wordpress editor?? That way, I would have seen them every time I logged in to write a new post instead of forgetting about them while they were floating around on my computer.
If you’ve been doing this as well, it’s time to stop. I wouldn’t doubt if I was the only one who’s been silly enough to do this, but if I’m not then this post might help you.
April 29th, 2008
I was reading Shoemoney’s Q & A post over at http://www.shoemoney.com and one of the answers really stood out for me.
The question was “How many times should a blogger update his blog with new blog posts in a week?”
Shoemoney’s brilliant answer: “as many as they feel like writing“.
At first this might seem like a lazy answer, but let’s think about it for a minute.
In forums like Digital Point, people are always asking how many times a day/week they should be posting. There are countless blog posts themselves about how many times a blogger should be updating their blog.
The thing is, there is no right or wrong answer. It’s different for everyone and every blog. It depends on the topic of the blog, the writing ability of the blogger, and the demand from the readers (among other various factors as well).
Therefor, I believe that Shoemoney’s answer is the best because it really should be “as much as you want”!
If I feel like writing ten posts this week, I’m gonna do it. If I feel like writing only one, I’ll do that too. I’m not going to burn myself out trying to write 5 posts a day. The only thing that will accomplish is crappy writing.
I’m the type of person who just can’t (or don’t want to) post that frequently. Other people might have the ability to write more. If you’re that type of person, then go for it!
You don’t need someone else’s “permission” to write as much as you want. There is no secret formula. In the end, you want to write quality posts. Emphasis on “quality”, not “quantity”.
If you can write 5 quality posts a week, you can make that your goal. If you can write 20 quality posts a week, make that your goal instead. Don’t write 5 quality posts and then 15 crappy posts just for the sake of posting.
What will posting crappy posts for the sake of posting get you? Hmm, let’s see:
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Crappy posts!
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Your readers will lose their trust or respect for you over time
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You won’t have people linking to you because they don’t want to link to a crappy blog
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Quality targeted traffic will dwindle
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You’ll lose your credibility as an expert in your field within the blogosphere (assuming you had cred in the first place)
If you post according to what someone else says is the magic number of posting, you’ll end up with those nasty side-effects (assuming that magic number is not your own personal magic number).
You don’t need to ask someone else how many times you should be updating your own blog. It’s completely up to you.
April 28th, 2008
