How Much Of Your Working Time Do You Spend Actually Working?

I am sure there are hundreds of blogs featuring a post today on procastinating; with all the activities blogers are supposed to do on top of blogging itself, it can be vary easy losing track of time and actually spend a whole "day at the office" doing no constructive work.

I wish I could set a routine for myself firstly on actually sitting at my computer (I have 2 small kids and a house to look after and I also like to have my own time to relax before going to bed at night), but so far even though I have tried, I haven't yet managed to find a balance between work and play (if you consider cooking, cleaning and shopping as play).

Supposing you have set hours to sit at your computer to do some of the activities necessary to blogging and promoting a blog or whatever else it is you are trying to promote, you must find a further balance between your work and promoting it. You can easily fool yourself into thinking that a whole day spent reading and commenting on blogs, stumbling, digging, participating in forums is work but what is going to be left for you to promote (ie Stumbling and Digging) if you don't write a blog post or article?

While all this social nonsense (not to use a stronger word) is necessary to get exposure, it is more important to create content (blog posts, articles, Squidoo lenses for me) and because everything takes time, you should spend at least half of your daily working hours working (creating content).

The best way to make sure you are not going to over-socialize (and then not have enough time to write that article you have planned days ago) is to start your day by doing the constructive work; if you base your articles on what you find on other blogs or social bookmarking websites, just take notes on interesting content you read the day before and then make a point of writing about it first thing in the morning.

I find that breaking my time in hours for writing content, half-hours for reading blogs, commenting, using each social bookmarking website you are a member of, and 20 or even 15 minutes for each forum is a good balance. If you feel that after 30 minutes of Stumbling, you haven't found enough good sites (a very common occurence for me), don't worry, there is still tomorrow!

If, like me, you don't have 8 hours a day to spend online, try not to join too many social networking/bookmarking websites. My personal favourites are StumbleUpon, Digg and BlogCatalog. I would have added Propeller but they banned me just as I was starting to Digg their system (sorry for the miserable pun). I have accounts with Facebook, Furl, Reddit, Technorati and others I can't think of right now but I just can't find the time to use them at the moment.

To find the right constructive work/not so constructive work balance, you must be very disciplined. What works for me might not work for everybody, but if you treat your blog (or whatever your online source of income is) as a real job, you are on the path to finding the right balance and I wish you all the success you deserve.

New Blogger Features Makes Blogging Easier Than Ever

As you may be aware, Google has blessed us Blogger users with 2 new features which should make it easier than ever for us to blog:

Blogroll:
Up until now, you could use the link list module so this is something I could do without but just for the sake of it I will try and change my blog's layout and use this new feature in the next few days (or weeks). You never know, using this may make a blog more SEO friendly than the existing link list.

Scheduled posting:
Now you can take a holiday! You can write posts in advance, indicate the date at which you want them published, hit the publish button and not worry about your blog not being updated for a certain period of time.
Up until now, you could save your drafts and change the date by going into "Post Options" at the bottom of your draft, but this meant that you could have for example a post dated April 10th, 2008 published on April 7th, 2008.
If you decided to take time off and have your daily posts written in advance, you could still write posts and save your drafts but this meant that you had to log into your blogger account every day in order to have your saved posts published at the right date (not exactly my idea of a holiday!).

Unfortunately Blogger doesn't provide its users with free automatically updated content yet but let's not ask for too much; I think it's a relief to know that blogger blogs are being constantly improved and it still doesn't cost us a dime!

Make Money Online Blogging: Blogger or Wordpress?

I came across a few discussions on the Internet over whether it is best to have a Blogger or a Wordpress blog when blogging about making money online, so I wanted to share my thoughts on this subject.

Some people think that Blogger blogs don't look "the business": they look cheap (maybe because they are!) and you can't take someone teaching you how to make money online seriously when it looks like they don't have any. I don't want to start a war between Wordpress and Blogger users (Wordpress or Blogger, I came across some wonderful blogs, while I also had my fair share of crappy ones on both sides!) but I would like to say that if you want to show people how to make money online, you have to start somewhere and for many, the zero-investment option (like Blogger) is an attractive one!

If you want to blog on a self-hosted Wordpress blog you can get hosting and a domain name for less than $100 a year, which is quite affordable, and while I reckon that Wordpress blogs look more professional, I wonder why spend that money when you could do it for free on a blogger blog? If you are blogging about how to save money, how are you going to explain to your readers that you paid for something that you could have gotten for free?

If you are inexperienced and know nothing or very little about hosting, uploading files and you learned the basics of HTML on the go (like me!), setting up a Wordpress blog can seem a bit daunting: are you here to show off to your readers or inform them? Consider an easy to maintain Blogger blog.

When you are just starting out on the net, you don't really know exactly where you are going; a blogger blog means no investment and if you decide that you have enough of blogging, you can just stop, whithout having to recoup your initial investment.

On the other hand, if you are really determined to keep on and make money from your blog, a Wordpress blog might be a wise option, as even though you investment is minimal, the fact that you have spent money on it might just be what you need to keep you motivated in your money-making experience.

I chose a blogger blog when I started out because it was free and easy: I never studied HTML and the only computer skills I possessed until six months ago were basic Word and Excel. I don't really know what a server is and I found some free html tutorials on the web, but I sometimes cheat (using "view source") to find out how something is done; my blog is mostly about saving money and making money online starting from no investment so I feel perfectly comfortable in my cheap-looking Blogger blog; also, I'm a busy woman and I couldn't be bothered to set up a Wordpress blog!

Blogging Heaven: Make Money Blogging About Blogs

Another blogging strategy that came to my attention recently is the reviewing strategy. I am not talking about sponsored posts here, I am talking about bloggers who choose to review a different blog in each of their posts.

The advantages of this blogging strategy are obvious: there are thousands (millions?) of blogs out there, so you will never get stuck for lack of inspiration. If you want to start a blog but don't know what to blog about, just blog about blogs! Leave a comment linking to your post (if possible) on each blog you review, monetize with Adsense (just an example) and why not, if your blog gets a big readership, take a big leap and start asking for a fee per review?

It can be difficult to keep the attention of your readers when you just write blog reviews: you are not teaching people anything new (except the opportunity to discover new blogs), so how exactly are you going to going to get people to subscribe to your blog?

Bloggin-Ads is a review blog, and while what I have described above may seem very easy, Mike and Michelle look like they are working very hard on this blog. The reviews featured are very detailed, which prove that they do spend some time reading and analysing the blogs they are reviewing.

Another thing I have noticed about Mike and Michelle is that they are not shy and really push readers to subscribe to the blog's feed; I left a few comments on some of the posts yesterday (when I find a new blog I like, I usually read more than one post and if I feel like commenting, I just do it) and today I received an email thanking me for my support and asking me to subscribe to Blogging-Ads.

There is also a page on the blog where you can submit a review of a blog (no necessarily your own) or just request a review of your own blog; of course you have to subscribe to the feed before being accepted; with currently 765 feed readers, I guess what they are doing must be working!

Getting reviewed on Bloggin-ads is free, and I think this is another blog that is going to make money (if it is not already: 765 subscribers in 4 months is not bad!), and I think I will ask for a review of Internet Junkie on this blog before the competition makes it too difficult!

The Importance of Writing a Good Blog Post Title

There are huge mistakes a blogger can make and I have just made one of them! Any guesses yet? Well, last Saturday I wrote a post and as I could not think of a catchy title to put on it at first so I just went and wrote the post, hit the preview button to check how it looked, and since it looked fine to me, I just went and published it but I forgot to put a title on it!

While this is not a tragedy in itself, not putting a title on a blog's post means that:
1- It looks like you are forcing your visitors to read your entire post before they know what you are talking about and unless they are regular visitors of your blog, most will not bother (expecially if the post is very long);
2- This unnamed blog post will be harder to find by search engines, which means that surfers looking for a particular topic might key in a word or set of words in their toolbar, and if these are words that should have been in your title, chances are these surfers will not reach your post;
3- If you are familiar with the CommentLuv plugin, you will know that when you comment on a blog using this, your last blog post will not appear (as I have recently discovered);

This brings me to the importance of choosing the right titles for your blog posts or articles; in my view, the main idea is that you should write catchy titles (but not too cheesy: I could never really trust a Make $1000 a Day title), specific enough to come out high enough in an Internet search, but not too specific: just enough to attract a broad enough audience that will not hit the back button as soon as they realise that they have no interest in your topic. If you would like to learn more about writing good titles for your blog posts or articles, you should read 8 Ways of Creating Compelling Blog Post Titles. This article was written a little while ago, but it does what it says on the tin, and that is the point of a good blog post title

I know I could have edited my post and added a title but when I realised my omission, my post had been live for at least 24 hours so I didn't bother; if I did, I would probably have called it something like: Increase Your Chances of Visitors Clicking Your Affiliate Links (which is a bit too long anyway;-).

Well, at least, my mistake gave me an idea for a brand new post so I can't complain about this!

Good News So Far This Month

I am having a good start with my money-making blog and articles so far this month. I am far from earning a significant amount of money but I had some good news recently:

Last November I won a €5 prize from Irish Media Survey; I received my €5 BonusBond voucher yesterday in the post and I also won another €5 in the December draw!

Yesterday I received an email from Associated Content: they are sending my earnings from October, November and December 2007 in my PayPal account. $2.21 is not much for 3 months, but I take this as good news because I thought that I had to earn a minimum of $100 before they would even consider paying me.

Ezine articles informed me I had earned the status of Expert Author, which came as a surprise, since I only submitted 2 articles on their website. I am not really clear on what being an Expert Author means or how to earn this status, but I know that my last article was featured for one day (yesterday) on their home page and sent to the EzineArticles RSS Feed, and that can only mean good news, since I had my blog's URL as well as my Associated Content profile page in the author's resource box.

And last but not least, after writing a comment on a high PR rank blog (well I consider a PR4 as high since it is much higher than mine!) that was found useful by the author, this little blog got a link in a post! Thank you Caroline, yesterday I received almost 20 visitors instead of the usual 7 or 8, which I am suspecting come mostly from my sister being bored at work!

Now that my ego is boosted a little bit, I can go on and write more articles. Maybe after all that clairvoyant was right, or maybe it is just down to all my hard work!

What Do Associated Content and Blogging Have in Common

I think that writing articles on Associated Content has a lot in common with blogging; here are a few similarities between Associated Content and a blog, which I have developped in my last article: Use Blogging Tools to Get Traffic to Your Articles.

The most important thing you need to do, whether you are a blogger or you want to earn some money from your articles, is getting as much traffic as you can, otherwise, it doesn’t matter if you are the best writer in the world (although it can help a little bit), you will not earn any money online.

Social Bookmarking:
You can submit each of your articles to social bookmarking websites such as Digg or StumbleUpon, just as you can submit your blog posts, provided you do not spam those websites.

Forums:
Associated Content has its own forum; bloggers can find different forums all over the internet. Using forums in order to increase traffic is a bit tricky, as most forums’ administrators hate spam and will not allow you to put links in your posts; however, if you participate often in forums and have interesting things to say, other forum members will get to recognize you and may want to contact you: most forums allow you to display your blog’s address or your Associated Content’s member page in your profile, there is usually also a facility that allows members to send each other personal messages without exchanging email addresses, for privacy and security reasons.

Commenting:
Leaving comments on other members of Associated Content’s articles will help you get a few visitors to your own articles, just as commenting on other people's blogs should get some traffic to your blog.

The main similarity between writing articles online and blogging is that you must get traffic if you want to earn money from them. Of course, there are also differences: if you have a passion and can come up with something different to say about it every day, blogging is the way to go but if you’d rather write about a lot of various topics, then writing articles on a website like Associated Content is an excellent way to earn money online.

How To Make Your Blog Successful

If you want to make your blog more successful, you should visit Caroline Middlebrook's blog.

Last August, she took the plunge and left her job as a software developper to try and earn a living from the Internet.

Why should you go to her blog? If, like me, you are suffering from information overload, you will find relief in her blog, because she has all the information you need to make your blog successful; all the information contained in just one blog, what more to ask for?

I see each of her blog posts as a full tutorial on one single aspect of successful blogging, very detailed and explained clearly; she doesn't hold back on any information and you will have everything to gain by subscribing to her feed, as many bloggers did (so did I).

If you want to see what I am talking about, here is the link again for Caroline Middlebrook's blog. Happy reading!

Promoting Your Blog Through Articles

If you have written some posts on your blog that you think are good enough to be published as articles and relevant to your blog, it is a good idea to submit them to as many free article directories as possible.

Most will not allow you to put links in the body of your articles but they always an author's resource box where you can put a link to your blog and whatever other links are relevant to the article.

I would not recommend using the social bookmarking websites for your own blog posts as you will be considered as a spammer if you do this too often but you can always bookmark your published articles, as these will contain a link to your blog. Be careful though, if you have submitted one article to 12 article directories, please choose only one of these to bookmark!

You can click here for a reminder of my free article directories list.