Free PM Tools
April 8, 2008
On Being a Healthy Blogger
April 8, 2008
- For starters I think people in all occupations can get stressed and suffer from ill health. I’ve had friends pass away from and survive heart attacks who work in numerous fields - including blogging. I’m a little skeptical that blogging is any more stressful than other professions - yes it can be a pressure cooker of a job - but I wonder if it’s more about the person, the way they deal with pressure, the choices that they make and the boundaries that they put around themselves etc than the occupation itself.
- Having said that - I’ve had my own little health scare of late with diagnosis of high blood pressure which my doctor thinks could partly be a stress related thing and perhaps related to work. It’s too early to tell and tests go on but it’s becoming clear that I need to make a few more changes in my life in addition to my own increased attempts to eat healthy and exercise more (something I’ve done since late last year). Tomorrow I’m wearing a blood pressure monitor for 24 hours - I’ll be interested to see if it rises or falls when I’m blogging!
- I can see how bloggers might suffer from the impact of a lack of exercise and poor diet. Blogging can be highly addictive and the temptation to blog through meal breaks, skip opportunities to exercise and to eat poorly is no doubt there for most of us. I know until late last year my exercise routines all went completely out the window and I began to put on weight.
- Lack of sleep is another common thing that many of us as bloggers fall into the trap of. I know of quite a few others who suffer from insomnia as a result of blogging right up until bed time and then not being able to ’switch off’.
- Another health related aspect of blogging is that I’ve come across a large number of bloggers lately who suffer from the effects of sitting on poor chairs all day every day. I know for the first few years of my own blogging ‘career’ that I had this problem from sitting on a kitchen chair and then a poor office chair all day. More recently with an investment in a ergonomic chair my back’s been a lot better.
Further Reading:
Let me leave you with three posts on ‘healthy blogging’ - all from Lea Woodward. Read more5 Reasons You Should Not be Blogging
April 8, 2008
- You absolutely hate writing - There’s no cure for this, and if you really loathe the thought of typing you should not be blogging. True, you can choose other type of media for example create a video blog or focus more on doing podcasts, but you’ll still need to write summaries and perhaps the occasional text post.
- You rather go out and play - If you don’t like looking at the computer for more than an hour, you can’t really blog. Yes again, you can be outdoor more often if you’re doing a video blog but you still need to edit the video, upload it and blog about it. Generally speaking, a blogger has to spend at least 2-3 hours a day looking at the computer screen.
- You don’t like to explore / learn - There is a lot of information on the Internet, to the point where there’s usually too much new things happening that you need to read, understand and eventually blog about. If you don’t adapt to well to learning new information, you end up with nothing to say on your blog.
- You choose the wrong topic - Spinning the same post in different angles can only get you so far. Although you can learn how to come out with creative topic to write about, usually if you find yourself running dry too fast, it has something to do choosing the wrong topic in the first place, a topic that you’re not really passionate about.
- You’re pretending to be another blogger - If have to develop your own blogging identity and style as soon as possible. You cannot constantly try to mimic what other bloggers are doing and trying to beat them at providing the exact same information, especially if your niche market already has several large, established blog.
You’ve Read ProBlogger the Blog - Now Buy the Book
April 8, 2008
I’m excited to announce today one of the worst kept secrets in my life - over the last year (longer actually) I’ve been writing a book with Chris Garrett. Today we’re Pre-Launching it as we’re just weeks from the book becoming available for purchase. The book is published by Wiley and is titled:
ProBlogger Book — Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
I’ll speak more over the coming weeks about the writing process - but today we just wanted to let you know about the upcoming launch, to point you to a site we’ve put together for the book and to invite you to sign up for a newsletter that will give you access to a sample chapter as well as a series of weekly blogging tips for a whole year.
Pre-Order and Save
Read more115 SocialNews Sites
April 8, 2008
Unlocking The Secrets Of The Million Dollar Entrepreneur Mindset
April 8, 2008
Let’s Follow Each Other on Twitter, Shall We?
April 7, 2008
Personal Branding Online 101: Buy Your Own Name As A Domain Name
April 7, 2008
How to Target the Right Social Media Sites
April 7, 2008
Most bloggers recognize the incredible potential that exists with social media marketing. Many want to maximize the traffic they receive from social media, so they add a Digg button to their posts or sign up for an account at StumbleUpon. What too many bloggers overlook is that Digg and StumbleUpon are just two of the hundreds of available options, and they may not be the best fit for every blogger.
In order to get the most out of social media traffic you’ll need to put some thought into choosing the social media sites that are the most appropriate for your blog and your audience. Unfortunately, none of us have the time to be an active member on more than just a few social media sites, and trying to target too many of them by adding countless buttons and widgets to your blog will only make it cluttered and ineffective.
Among social media sites there is a huge variety of audiences, types of content that is popular, amount of traffic that is sent to popular links, etc. I think most of us would agree that quality traffic is more important than quantity of traffic. The quality of traffic that you receive from social media will be largely dependent upon finding the right fit for your blog. You’ve probably read that social media traffic is very low quality. From my experience, this is not always the case. Traffic from poorly-targeted social media sites will be low quality.
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A “Super” WordPress Theme for Affiliate Marketers
April 7, 2008
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money blogging, but with all the different monetization models and all the different theme out there today it’s more difficult than ever to find what you need. That’s why when developing the Super Affiliate WordPress Theme, I had only one group of people in mind - the blogger cum affiliate marketer.
The Super Affiliate WordPress Theme is more flexible and ideal for affiliate marketers who get traffic from more than one source, especially via Google AdWords or other PPC (Pay Per Click) ads.
If you’re getting free search engine traffic or social bookmarking traffic (from StumbleUpon for example) you can be more relaxed as to where that traffic ends up. In a typical blog layout, a single visitor might get to the content page, but before getting to the end of the content there are so many other links, sidebars, ads and other distractions that they can click on. This means that the ability to tunnel traffic to perform a single action (subscribe, buy, opt-in) is severely limited.
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