Category Archives: Problogging

Promoting Your Blog with Blog Search Engine

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Promote your blogOne of the trickiest things about online publishing, particularly in blogging, has nothing to do with content generation. Although everyone claims that content is king, the truth is that there a lot of blogs out there that have great content but never get more than a handful of readers each month, if any at all.

The problem in many cases is that these blogs are just not accessible or searchable. Let’s face it, even if your blog does get indexed in Google, what are your chances of making it to the top search results as a new blog? Unless you already have a very wide online circle, there’s no way that you’ll get that much traffic from the major search engines, at least until your blog gets older and starts to rank better. In the meantime, you’re still left with the problem of growing your readership in as little time as possible.

One way to help get more traffic to come to your blog is by taking advantage of niche search engines. Instead of having to compete with countless sites on mainstream search engines like Google, targeting the users of niche search engines will automatically narrow down the competition.

A good niche search engine for blogs you might want to check out is the Blog Search Engine. The Blog Search Engine is an easy way to promote your blog without having to worry about rankings and SEO. All you need to do is submit your blog details and pay the $14.99, which will get you a review from Blog Search Engine aside from getting listed on the index. Once you get the confirmation email containing your username and password for the search engine, you will also have the option of upgrading your package to get more links from other blog sites, and even have your banner featured on Blog Search Engine.

Just remember, once you start getting visitors to your site from search engines, it is your job to keep them; so while I urge you to work on the accessibility of your blog, I can’t emphasise enough the importance of having relevant and interesting content that will keep your visitors coming back.

Originally posted on November 14, 2011 @ 11:45 pm

How to Make Full Time Salary by Means of Blogging

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Do you want to earn extra money without interfering with your day to day activities? Well then you can, with a little patience and creativity, you can earn money online and lots of them for that matter. By simple blogging your way to the internet market, you can earn a full time salary in three simple steps. A business MBA person can benefit a great deal from this. Click here to know about this. Continue reading →

Originally posted on December 2, 2011 @ 1:32 am

Freedom or Chains in Blogging (From the Archives)

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While blogging for other people, I realized that it isn’t as easy to blog for yourself and because of that difference in difficulty many bloggers don’t succeed.

People always assume that I have great freedom thanks to my writing on various sites saying things like “it must be nice to get paid to write about what you love” and while it can sometimes be amazing, there are other times when you are pushing out content that is just to satisfy your need for a pay check, and it is at that point where you feel the heavy chains of blogging holding you down.

Recently, while on Freelance Writing Jobs Radio, I realized how I haven’t really made it to that transitionary point that most of the other well known bloggers I know have been able to do. The point where they have been running their own blog for so long, as well as other sites, that they are able to leverage that brand and go out on their own and be successful.

I don’t know if this is laziness on my part, or fear, but I still constantly and consistently work for others, and so I had to defend network/company backed blogging as a career option on the show. The others played it off as something bloggers at the start of their career do, but I have been employed to blog full time by one company or another for the last three years, and it doesn’t look like that will change much any time soon.

For me, there has always been some entity above me that I had to serve, and in having to serve, there are sacrifices I have had to made. Understand this when you get into blogging: you will either find a way to transition and work for yourself, or you will always work for someone else. Doing the former can be much more difficult than the latter but from talking to others, taking your life into your own hands when blogging can be much more rewarding and so if you start blogging as a career, start thinking to yourself very early on: how can I do this for me?

Originally posted on February 28, 2011 @ 10:48 am

The Psychology Behind Corporate Blogging

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Something I’ve noticed changing over the last two years is how companies perceive blogs. Early on in blogging, despite the success of many great blog networks at the time, companies seemed to think that blogs were really only a tool for average people to write about their lives, and the various minutia that occurred in them.

Blogs at this time were creating a whole community of both Internet celebrities and Internet brands that were parlayed into huge amounts of cash through advertising systems, and sales. Corporations started, very slowly realizing how important blogs could be to their businesses, but we are still on the cusp of this realization going global.

The reason corporations look down on blogs is for a variety of reasons stemming from the massive numbers of personal blogs, to the low barrier of entry.

Personal Blogs

For every successful blog making money, or helping get out a strong branding message, there are probably one thousand blogs dedicated to people around the world talking about their lives. From the perspective of the average company doing research on blogs, they’ll likely come across many blogs talking about their pets, family, friends, and children. This doesn’t convey to them the level of professionalism available in blogging, and thus gives them a reason to think of blogs with a negative connotation.

Spam

We have all seen them, spam blogs are the bane of my existence. They steal content, and they push out crud through the Internet. Companies doing research on any topic will come across at least one spam blog in their searches, and this type of republishing outside of the normal control of the original publisher might scare companies who want to remain in control of their message. Imagine posting an article on your blog and a spam blog picks it up before you realize you’ve made a mistake. You correct your mistake, but the spam blog continues to have the “old” article which makes your company look bad. Small, and simple for sure, but this has to be a concern for businesses going forward.

Power of the Message Versus Money Invested

How powerful is the message going to be compared to the time and effort put into the blog? Companies are used to press releases and the results that can be achieved from them, but what can they expect from their blog? How will it grow, change and evolve over time? Will anyone even care? Companies are always looking at return on investment, and there hasn’t been many case studies released to companies regarding the return on investment of a good corporate blog.

Low Barrier to Entry

If it is too easy, it probably doesn’t have value. I have heard both people and companies claiming that due to the low barrier of entry in blogging, there is little to no value in blogging. It takes almost no time to set up a blog, make it look nice, and start feeding it content. But what companies aren’t seeing is how long it took to get to this point with regard to the barrier for entry. There were companies creating blog software in hopes of lowering the barrier for entry for over a decade. The barrier started high, but these companies weren’t interested in the idea behind it back in those days.

Knowledge and Fear

Most companies just don’t understand enough about the blogosphere, and what it means to be a company participating in it. Because of their lack of knowledge, they are afraid of jumping in and making mistakes, not completely understanding that transparency is one of the key benefits of blogging that will help companies connect to potential customers on a new level of relationship.

Conclusion

Companies can get into blogging, and do amazing things with their blog, but they have to be brave enough to take the first steps, find people that can help them reach their goals in an efficient and inexpensive manner, and be ready to be transparent. Blogging can be an amazing line of communication and community building for any company.

This is one topic where I wish I had taken a psychology degree so that I could articulate better the factors that really go into each point, as I believe someone could make a whole career around the psychology of companies involvement or lack of involvement in the blogosphere.

Originally posted on October 15, 2010 @ 1:28 pm

Always Behind: Stressful Blogging

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As a full time blogger, I always feel like I am behind. When I start my day, I feel like I am working on things that should have been done two days ago, and at the end of my day, I don’t feel a sense of fulfillment, just more stress regarding starting work the next day.

There are always a million things to do, and it feels like I only chip away at a few items a day. There is never that sense of fulfillment that normal people get when completing work, and if you add in the highs and lows of the traffic and comment interaction received on the actual blog posts, you have a recipe for a career that doesn’t feel great. At least when you are working towards meeting other people’s expectations.

From Jeff’s post on the subject:

This feeling of always being behind sucks as it takes its toll on the human mind/emotions. After awhile, blogging isn’t fun anymore at least blogging for others. Now, I should make the point that writing for others is not that bad when you are writing about your passion and working with great people but as an individual, when you are spread out amongst 3-5 websites, the quality of writing suffers, it’s not fun anymore, and I feel as if I gain nothing by subjecting myself to that kind of lifestyle on the web.

I have experienced this throughout my four years of working online, and will probably continue to experience this feeling in the future. It is nice to know that I am not alone, and I hope that others that are experiencing this will all come together and find ways to help each other out.

Blogging as a job isn’t the dream that people make it sound like when they try and sell you that e-book. Understand what you are getting into before you leap in with both feet, and make choices towards employment that you’ll enjoy with the express understanding that you will no doubt enjoy it less once you make it a job.

I have to admit, I am envious of Jeff and his WPTavern idea. I hope it goes well for him, and I hope once he reaches the point where he can work solely for himself that he feels that sense of enjoyment that he currently lacks.

Originally posted on November 23, 2010 @ 5:27 pm