Author Archives: Admin

A Simple WordPress Category Professionalism Tip

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I have a simple tip for everyone today on how to make your WordPress blog look more professional. This tip is especially important to newer bloggers who sometimes forget to add categories to their posts.

WordPress Manage Categories

I hate seeing that any blog has posts under the Uncategorized category. This is the default category that WordPress created for everything that is not otherwise categorized to be stuffed into. It just looks bad to leave things this way, but there is a very simple solution to this problem: get rid of uncategorized.

You can’t just delete the category though, as it is the default category and thus, doesn’t have a delete option in the WordPress administration.

You can however, edit the category.

After clicking on edit, next to uncategorized, you will be brought to a screen similar to the one below.

WordPress Edit Category

You can then change the category name and the category slug to something else. I usually select something like News, General News, or Site News. I find these all sound much better than the default uncategorized and to readers, it will look as though you gave your post a category, even if you forgot.

Note: This will change the permalinks of any post that was previously under uncategorized to now using whatever post slug you entered in the edit screen.

Originally posted on September 21, 2007 @ 7:34 pm

Million Euro Wiki

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I stay in touch with a number of really interesting people online, and Bob, the owner of JohnCow.com and the MillionEuroWiki, definitely ranks pretty highly on my “interesting meter”.

When he told me about his Million Euro Wiki, I wasn’t too impressed. I bought a page on the Million Dollar Wiki, and wasn’t about to spend another $100 USD on a page on a website, no matter how good it was, but then he and I talked about sweetening the deal, and his iPod Touch giveaway was created.

That’s right, he is giving away a 16GB iPod Touch randomly to one of each 25 page owners. So if you buy a page, you have a 1 in 25 chance of getting an iPod Touch from your purchase. How is that for a return in your investment? Not to mention if the site does really well, and you own a premium page you can resell it to someone else at any time.

Not only that, but I can give you a promotional code that will save you $10 on your purchase of a Million Euro Wiki page, and that’s something I can’t do with its Dollar based counterpart. If you enter xfep into the promotional code area, it should save you $10. Let me know if it doesn’t work, and I will yell at Bob.

Here is a bit about the Million Euro Wiki:

What is the Million Euro Wiki?

A brand new concept that allows users to participate in an exclusive micro-economy. If you purchase a word, you will become the page owner for a one time fee of €75 (or $100) and the page is yours for as long as you want. You have the right to sell your page for a profit at any time and we promise we will not ask you for any commission on it. Page owners are able to setup an online business on their page and benefit from being part of a community that works as a team to bring in traffic and revenue.

Check out the Million Euro Wiki today, and be part of this interesting trend.

Originally posted on October 2, 2007 @ 8:16 pm

How Do You Cope With Blogger Burn Out?

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A friend of mine, Ahmed Bilal, posted about dealing with blogger burn out on Performancing, and while he gives some great tips on battling the problem, he doesn’t explain why it happens.

My mother-in-law, doesn’t understand what I do for a living. She and her husband work on a farm. They assume that I am lazy, and that I basically read an online version of a newspaper, and play games all day. Don’t I wish!

Blogger burn out is probably as prevalent as any other technology or writing burn outs, but as blogging continues to switch into full time income worthy jobs, the pressure to perform also increases. If you are working in a network, they have certain expectations about the content you will produce, as they want to see a return on their investment. If you are working for yourself, then you have even higher expectations as you work on building up your online empire.

This can lead you into a very skewed lifestyle with all your time, focus, and energy being directed at managing your blog or blogs. And after a while your mind and body will get tired of doing this without break, and especially if you don’t find the time to enjoy your life.

I want to repeat, that bloggers don’t get burnt out more often than any other type of job, but that it is a growing concern as the number of bloggers continues to grow.

Here are one of the five tips that Ahmed posted:

Vary Your Routine: I don’t have a single day that goes like the last one, and while it DOES have a negative impact on my income it’s also wonderful for keeping me sane. You can have somewhat the same times for waking up, sleeping and perhaps 2-3 hours of your most important work. But beyond that, keep things flexible.

Check out the rest on Performacing.

My biggest tip to deal with blogger burn out is to just disconnect. Talk to your boss, or even yourself, and just take a day, usually works best on a Monday or a Friday, and just take an extended weekend. On this extra day that you’ve taken, make sure to disconnect. Do not check your e-mail, do not check your blog stats, do not blog. Take a day for yourself, get outside, and read a book. Do something you enjoy that isn’t blog related. When you come back to blogging after a complete day, or weekend of being disconnected, most of the time you will feel refreshed and ready to tackle the next challenge.

Originally posted on September 21, 2007 @ 1:44 am

What is a Problogger?

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Now that I am working on compiling a list of all the probloggers in the world, I have been getting questions in regards to “what is a problogger?”

A problogger is someone that makes an income from blogging. This income could be a few dollars a month, all the way up to generating a steady income to support a family. People like Darren Rowse and John Chow are people we normally associate with probloggers but they are special examples, and not the more general reality of problogging.

If your goal is to pay for your internet connection every month, and you make that goal, in my mind, you are a problogger. Your efforts in regards to blogging are generating income that is paying for a goal you have.

For my World Problogger List, you don’t have to be a full time problogger, but I do ask that you only apply to have you name listed if you make a fair income from blogging. If I added every person that made more than ten cents to the list, my fingers would fall off.

Again, if you want to be added, I ask that you send your full name, blog URL, and location through to me via the comments on this and other World Problogger List posts, or through the contact page.

Originally posted on September 22, 2007 @ 4:27 pm

$54,000 in Prizes for the ProBlogger Birthday Contest

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Darren Rowse has finally tallied up the dollar value of his blog’s birthday contest and it is going to rank as one of the biggest blog related contests ever. If you haven’t won in previous contests, I’d hate to think what your odds will be in Darren’s contest, but no doubt the prizes will be amazing.

Here is a bit from his post on Problogger.net:

There are 115 sponsors (give or take a couple that we’re finalizing) – some are offering multiple prizes (one is offering something for up to 500 of you – which pushed up the prize pool value). Prizes range from getting theme songs composed for podcasts/videos (something I wouldn’t mind winning myself), to iPods, to logo designs, to magazine subscriptions, to books, to cash and vouchers and so much more. Prizes values range from just a few dollars in value to thousands of dollars.

I consider myself to be fairly unlucky when it comes to contests of random chance, but having won advertising on The Blog Beat made me a happy blogger, and I think I will watch Darren’s contest from the sidelines. Good luck to all those that enter.

Originally posted on October 1, 2007 @ 10:15 pm