Category Archives: Quick Notes

10 Ways to Hurt Your Blog’s Brand by Commenting on Other Blogs (From the Archives)

A crazy long title from Darren today with his view on how commenting on other blogs can hurt your blog’s brand.

Most of them have to do with being lazy, or spamming, but they are still great things to keep in mind when you are commenting on someone else’s blog.

2. Excessive Self Linking – The practice of leaving links inside posts is not something that bothers me too much – unless it gets excessive. A well placed link back to something you’ve written (or that someone else has written) previously can really add to a conversation – particularly if what you’ve written else where is too long or detailed for the comment thread itself. What does risk annoying others is when you include lots of links to yourself in every comment you make and/or when the links are irrelevant to the topic and/or when you just leave a link without saying anything else. Keep links relevant and in moderation and you’ll find people respond to them well.

Check out the full post at Problogger.net.

Originally posted on January 21, 2011 @ 2:18 am

Making Passive Income

Freelance Switch has released “A Guide to Making Passive Income” on their NotByTheHour.com domain. It is separated into four parts, with each part tackling a different thing that people can do to generate an income without any long term work. Things like selling stock photos, writing a book, selling subscriptions, and creating content sites.

From the site:

Getting paid by the hour is pretty neat, but it’s even better when you have income that comes in when you?re taking time off too! Freelancers are uniquely positioned to be able to spend time creating sources of passive income while still getting their main money earning work done.

Streams of passive income can take a bit of work to get started, some even take a little work to maintain, however they are well worth it. Having a steady source of income is particularly useful for a freelancer as it helps mitigate risk and balance out some of the ups and downs of freelancing. Besides who doesn’t want a source of income that keeps generating with or without your input!

The guide’s website is beautiful, and the information, while a bit basic in parts, is really well written. They also give some example websites that can help you on your passive income journey over on the right hand side of the page. Pretty much everyone will find at least one page useful, and worthy of bookmarking.

Originally posted on September 14, 2010 @ 10:41 pm

10 Essential Email Skills

Freelance Switch has an article up helping everyone learn how to deal with e-mail better. I am horrible for giving e-mail too much time and attention, and I know I am not the only one with that problem.

The article covers things like getting your inbox to empty, filtering out all but the essential e-mails, and following up on e-mails.

Here is a sample of the article:

Be professional. It’s common for people to write emails with lazy grammar, spelling, capitalization, slang and the like. Well, that’s fine if you’re writing to your relatives or best friends, but otherwise, try to observe the rules of writing. Capitalize correctly, try to spell words correctly, and don’t use slang. Begin emails with a salutation (at least a “Hi Leo”) and end with a signature.

Now if only I could follow these rules…

Originally posted on September 24, 2010 @ 12:57 pm

Three Ways to Spice Up Any Blog Post

Brian Clark of Copyblogger writes some amazing posts, and in his most recent post, he talks about spicing up blog posts, something that some writers sorely need.

Use Sensuous Language – use words to bring things to life ala “the fear crawled down my spine creating an all encompassing shiver.”
Employ High Impact Wording – use words that aren’t being used in the everyday like monumental.
Be Entertaining – funny is hard, but when it works, it can create a strong connection between the writer and readers.

Check out more examples on Copyblogger.

Originally posted on January 18, 2011 @ 2:25 am

9 Ideas for Blog Posts When You Are Stuck

Over on Search Engine Guide, there is a great post about nine general ideas you can use as a blogger if you are stuck. It includes things like re-igniting old topics, crediting other bloggers, and creating a compilation.

From the post:

Credit Other Bloggers: In any given week there are dozens of posts and articles around your industry which people should definitely read. This is your opportunity to categorize these other posts and spread some link love. Both Search Engine Land and Marketing Pilgrim both do this on a regular basis.

While it may not be every bloggers cup of tea, it does give out some good ideas for bloggers that talk about blogging specifically. Not that the post couldn’t be further generalized to appeal to every type of blogger. Check it out on Search Engine Guide.

Originally posted on March 22, 2010 @ 9:59 pm