Over on Performancing, there is a great post up with twenty-two places you can find blogging jobs, from job boards, craigslist, and blog networks that are always looking for talent.

Here is a bit from the article:

Out of all the email I receive on a daily basis, where to find blogging jobs is the question I’m asked the most. The fact is, there are tons of places to find them online. Some, we all know about, others are a little less well-known. Chances are, if you’re looking for work as a problogger, the ad will be listed on one of these boards.

Check out the list, and feel free to comment here or there on places that should have been added. Also, let me know if you think the community needs a new, better blog related job board. I have the domain, the software, and I would love to connect people to the blogging, design, or development job of their dreams.

Originally posted on October 1, 2007 @ 10:44 pm

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

With at least one blogger thinking about trying to monetize in a different way than banner advertisements, I thought I should point to a great post from Bootstrapper about launching a revenue producing membership website.

Here is a snippet from the post:

The pessimist might think this is a nice ploy, because now hundreds of people are going to try, and they’ll flood the market with services – obscuring the few truly good subscription services that might follow Yaro’s Blog Mastermind. The optimist will note the one clue Yaro gave that will clear all the competitors away: establishing your presence online, which is the first step, and takes the blogger “with potential” six months to two years.

My own opinion on the matter is that if you haven’t built at least one PR (Google PageRank) 6 site on your own (or are not associated with having done so), you haven’t established enough presence for a subscription service to succeed. PR is a much reviled measure of a website/ blog’s success, but it’s a ballpark measure of how much linkage you’re getting from elsewhere and thus recognition.

I agree that it can be difficult to build up a level of authority that would allow a person to make a revenue producing membership site, but I think that the level of difficulty is a good thing, and will hopefully help people decide which program, or website is right for them.

Check out the full post on Bootstrapper.

Originally posted on September 24, 2007 @ 6:52 pm

SarahInTampa is a highly enjoyable blog about technology, web applications and a myriad of other interesting tidbits, and I have been watching her blog for a long while now. She was even nice enough to link to this site in her sidebar, when it first got started. (Thanks again Sarah!)

Today, she had to post some interesting news though, after nearly four years with TypePad, she will most likely be leaving the hosted blog service.

From her recent blog post:

As you may know, I’m preparing on a site overhaul over the next few months. My designer recommended WordPress to me, but I’ve been happy with TypePad for years and didn’t want to change. However, I ran into a limitation today regarding multiple authors. In TypePad (the Pro plan), you can add authors but you cannot give them control to make any changes to the blog beyond just writing posts. Well, since a co-author and I will be writing for one of the new blogs, I wanted to give him control over the template, too. It seemed I could not do this, but I wanted to make sure. I created a support ticket to confirm. I let TypePad know how important this feature was and that it may be a make-or-break decision for me in my choice of weblog services going forward.

They want me to upgrade to Business Class for this one feature? Business Class starts at $89.95 per month! PER BLOG!!! (Who pays that?!)

It looks like I have no choice now but to leave TypePad.

What is even more shocking to me is that TypePad isn’t bending over backwards to help her solve this, especially since she has been quite vocal about her support of SixApart and their products. Shame on them and another great win for WordPress.

Companies shouldn’t treat bloggers this way. We spread news to a wide audience very fast.

Originally posted on October 4, 2007 @ 12:21 am

A good friend of mine, Ahmed Bilal, has put up a post on Performancing asking Google bashers to stop complaining.

I really enjoyed how direct he was, and so I thought I would share the article here:

You can’t pass a day in the blogging / SEO / make money online niche without hearing someone complain about Google. For some it’s about getting shafted by the search ranking algorithm, for others it’s a tiff over things such as the no-follow debate and paid links mess, and still others who have a deep-rooted mistrust for all things Google because of Google’s increasing influence over the web.

Here’s the hard reality – at least ONE of your top-ranked sites will eventually suffer either through a hand-job or because of some quirk in the algorithm. You WILL get screwed over by Google and your rankings WILL drop. It’s how the game goes – if you cannot control 100% of your ranking factors (and you cannot), then you are not 100% safe. There is ALWAYS a risk with Google or with any other vehicle that you depend on to earn your livelihood.

He then goes on to giving some tips on how you can avoid this eventuality, but I think he said it best in his first two paragraphs.

Originally posted on September 11, 2007 @ 9:22 pm