A common challenge with writing is putting forth your opinion while knowing you are going to upset, annoy or lose a portion of your audience. How can you explain your position when you know it is not going to be 100% popular? Some of the best stand-out articles are when someone actually has an opinion…
In my post about web community building and participation I mentioned making friends and contacts. I think this is an important and much overlooked factor. For people who work online, usually from home, it can be a terribly solitary and lonely existence. Over the years I have had the good fortune to meet some great…
One of the great things about the internet is the fact you can connect with people from all around the world with diverse backgrounds and interests. In fact I think technology has followed a very human drive for connecting, when techies connected computers together they were really connecting people. Only yesterday I was telling someone…
I’m thinking now I have a few of these I need to do some sort of a page for linking to interviews. How would you do it? This sort of thing is still new to me so I am not sure what the “done thing” is 🙂 Anyway, Bloginite has just posted up a quicky…
Since I wrote about how bloggers make money I have had three different people asking about the controversial topic of paid links. I know from past experience when one or two people ask there are usually many more people who are interested, so here are my thoughts and a small poll to see how you…
When I wrote a post explaining how to get more Digg users to subscribe to your blog there were quite a few people who doubted me. “Impossible”, “waste of time”, “Diggers don’t subscribe”, “etc”, people said. Well, I feel a little vindicated today. Yesterday Codswallop was featured on the Digg homepage, today I see we…
Useful and interesting content is not all you should be creating for your blog. At the same time you need to be building your blog in other ways. Your content can attract new visitors, can help retain the visitors you have, and can bring you in links. Here are some tactics you can use: Flagship…
I consider myself a pretty clued up geek but since my Social Media Marketing roundup I have been learning loads about my favourite social media internet tools. One new find for me that I am quite interested in is the discovery on CornwallSEO that you can send your Stumbleupon pages to your friends If you…
One of the question themes I get asked about most is making money with blogs. While this isn’t a “make money online” blog like Darrens or Johns, it is still something I know many of you care about. While I never talk about how much I earn it is no secret that my money is…
Well? What do you want? Sometimes when I work with my coaching clients, one of the things we have to do is really discuss what their actual goals are. Not what they think their goals are, what they really are. It’s important because once you get going on a project you don’t want to be…
Social Media seems to be quite a popular topic, you guys seemingly had no problems submitting your social media links. Thanks to all who submitted and for anyone who did not get featured, please try on the next one, better luck next time! So What Is Social Media? The main problem seemed to be from…
I have just been going through and editing the Social Media Roundup for tomorrow (submissions closed by the way). As part of the process I have gone through the major social media sites for insights. One thing that is common to almost all of them struck me as missing from Facebook. What is it? Discoverability….
I was looking over the member blogs over at the Authority Blogger Forum and had an idea I wanted to share with you. To prove or disprove this theory though I will need your help, just a click in a little poll. My theory? That many people don’t know what they are going to write…
I love ice cream. You could say I am an ice cream fan. One of the wonderful things about ice cream is the huge variety of styles and flavours. Something for everyone, right? Remind you of anything? From the title of this post you can guess I think blogs are a lot like ice cream….
Recall I found out about an automatic commenter-thanking plugin I was very excited about? It turns out that Dreamhost, my hosting company, were not quite as thrilled as I was. Hello, Please disable the plugin that is causing this query (otherwise I’ll have to disable your mysql table or user and I really don’t want…
What would you do if you knew you could not fail? What goes through your mind, what are the words you tell yourself? How do you feel about yourself? Quietly think that over to yourself right now. Many people I speak to are constantly limiting their own performance through self doubt, lack of self respect…
If you recall I waffled on for too long so the original interview was split into two parts. I just heard that you can now go and listen to Part 2 🙂 Again I am telling you about it before I listen myself so I just hope I don’t come over too badly!
You may have noticed a small addition to my footer (if I manage to work out the CSS bug that keeps hiding it!). It’s a Creative Commons button. What is that all about, you ask? Read on in my post “Creative Commons For Bloggers” …
Is blogging a good way to make money? It might surprise you, it might even disappoint you, but I don’t recommend it. A friend is looking to make some money fast. His business is slow and needs to make up the shortfall. He asked about blogging, and I told him that wasn’t the answer. I…
Blog Carnivals are a great way to meet other bloggers in your niche, get more exposure, links, comments and traffic.
Do you know what your blog is about? Strange question, but a serious one!
What YOU think your blog is about and what your audience thinks it is about might be two very different things …
A great discussion is happening over at the Authority Blogger Forum started by Khalid about leaving links in comments. Head over and leave your thoughts? Personally I agree with the excellent first answer by DazzlinDonna I would only leave a link in a comment if it was necessary – such as to prove a point,…
Just lately I have been the target of some pretty clumsy linkbait attempts. A couple of readers prompted me to look at one particular blog where the author on three separate occasions (that we know of) has goaded me to react. First of all this makes me super grateful for my loyal readers. Not only…
As you might already know, one of the ways I earn income is by blogging for other people. This practice is becoming more and more common as companies realise the benefit of having a blog but their staff do not have the time to keep up the content. Companies can choose to go with a…
Anne-Marie emailed me to tell me about a discussion going on about copyright protection for photos and content. What is the legal position around using other peoples images? Are you OK if you provide attribution? Or is that only CC licensed? If you look in the comments you will see there is some excellent discussion,…
I just got back from a trip to Budapest to see the Hungarian Forumula 1 Grand Prix. While we probably imbibed rather more booze than is advisable we had a great time exploring a fascinating city and of course the excitement of watching our boy Lewis do the business in the race itself. What struck…
I haven’t even listened to this myself yet (I hope I don’t sound like a complete prat) but Sara has informed me that part one of the Random Bits Podcast featuring me is up and ready to listen to. Sara split the interview into two parts because I jabbered on far too long so the…
One thing I like to collect in my swipe file is quotes. Quotes make you look more intelligent than you really are because you can borrow someone elses smarts and make it look like they are agreeing with you 😉 I saw these positive quotes in a comment over at the Dilbert Blog last year…
One of the most common issues with blogs that I critique is the WWW/No-WWW issue. That is where you can see the same content with both the WWW. in the URL and without. Doesn’t seem like much of a problem? There is a theory around SEO circles that having content available on both creates problems…
I was discussing blogging with a couple of marketers the other day and the inevitable “aren’t blogs online diaries” comment surfaced. While I patiently explained the different types of blogs to those guys I realised many of us probably have some sort of cross-over between types and rarely consider what our dominant blogging style is….
What is the Summer Slump? The Summer Slump is a dip in attention and traffic. It affects many areas of life and business, not just blogging. Round about now our audience is thinking about vacations, slacking off, going to the beach, spending more time outside and less at their computers. The slump pretty much covers…
A couple of people asked recently how I send those automated emails that thank people for commenting. The answer is quite simple, it is a fantastic plugin called Comment Relish Comment relish is a Wordpress plugin developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. A…
It was my birthday yesterday, plus it is six months since I launched this blog, so I am in a reflective mood while nursing a massive hangover 🙂 Today I would like to talk about blogging goals and what we do to work towards them. Most people would agree that it is good to have…
Over at copyblogger I wrote a piece where I advised if you want to be a good writer you need to write every day. In this post I am going to tell you it might be better to not post every day. Whaaaat? You see there is a key word there, did you miss it?…
Just for today, how about trying this. Don’t just browse your favourite blogs, seek out some new blogs and Write a comment Send a supportive email Bookmark at Del.icio.us Stumble at Stumbleupon Write a post linking to what you have found Why? Don’t you think it would be a nice thing to do? … and…
In response to my post the other day about short term versus long term thinking, a reader, who wished to remain nameless for reasons you are about to discover, let me know about her experiences with a traffic report from an Internet Marketing “guru”. It seems this guru has recently discovered blogs. Actually, correction, has…
Liz and I just had a conversation that I had to write about. We were commenting how people sometimes sabotage their own efforts running after short term gains. There are obviously unethical things people do to get ahead. Things like spamming. Shady black hat tactics. Affiliate cookie stuffing. Tricks. Attacks. Then there are the less…
Adam started a great thread over at the Authority Blogger Forum which I would like to open up over here; How many columns should a blog have, and why? For myself, I switch between 2 and 3 columns. When I have advertising, such as at DSLRBlog, I have a third column to accommodate it. That…
For the second time in the history of this blog I have deleted a post. While that is an hour of my life I am not getting back I feel better for doing it. Anyone who grabbed the RSS up to about ten minutes ago will still be able to read it, but I am…
The blogging forum just broke 1000 posts! Not bad for a brand new forum, it’s only just over a week since it was announced (of course it helps that it is free to join and full of wonderful people) 🙂 When you sign up make sure you add your details and blog URL to the…