How to Find Guest Post Opportunities For Your Blog

Guest posting is a great way to increase traffic, network with other bloggers, and build links. But how do you know which blogs are good guest post opportunities? In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of guest posting for various blogs so I thought I’d share what I learned from my experience. Check Blogs For Previous Guest Posts The strategy that worked the best was checking blogs to see if they published guest posts... 

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3 Reasons Bloggers Should Read Books

Reading a book seems very low tech in this current digital age. But don’t underestimate the words on a physical page. While many bloggers do their reading online, you can gain an advantage by shutting off the computer and reading a book offline. Here are three reasons to head over to your local bookstore. 1. To Improve Credibility Books are still perceived as trusted sources of authority. If you become well read that you quote books often, your credibility will increase. I felt that Brian Clark... 
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2010 Reminder: Test the Monetization of Your Blog

Monetization can get lost in all the blogging activities we have to juggle. Let’s face it, there’s a lot that goes into blogging. Content, marketing, and building relationships take up a lot of our time and it can be easy to forget about monetization. But if you want to make money with your blog, you can’t ignore, well, the making money part I believe that content and traffic comes first, but after you generate a healthy content and traffic base, there comes a time when you must... 
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How to Stop Being Boring (and Why You Probably Are)

I’m boring and you’re probably boring too. I just listened to this interview with Seth Godin. He gives really good advice about how to successfully run a business. You should definitely listen to the whole thing if you want to make more money with your blog. One of the things Seth said that struck me is found at the 38:30 mark. He said, “If people aren’t talking about you, they’re not talking about you for a reason. And the reason isn’t that they dislike you. They’re... 
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4 Reasons Why I’m Loving iStockphoto.com

In last 30 days, I’ve been using the images from the stock photography site iStockphoto and it’s been a great experience. It all started with a client who need content for a new site. I created a bunch of text pages for them, but then they said they wanted images on each of the pages. I usually get my pictures from Flickr and Stock.XCHNG but I couldn’t find relevant images for many of the pages. The client is in the business-to-business marketing niche, which doesn’t lend... 
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Why I’m Striving to Increase My Referral Traffic in 2010

I have a problem. I’m addicted to search engine traffic. You probably wouldn’t be too surprised since my day job is an SEO specialist. I’m just doing what I’m skilled at for generating traffic. However, in 2010, I want to focus more on generating referral traffic, or traffic that comes from sites other than search engines. I have a couple reasons for doing this. Search Engines Change The search engines will change their algorithms, which could cause me to lose my rankings.... 
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Productivity Tips For Bloggers From a Bestselling Author

Steven Pressfield is great example of perseverance for anyone in the creative field including bloggers. His first couple novels never saw print. But he kept at it and 17 years after his college graduation, he finally got a book published and received a paycheck. His later books became bestsellers. In this podcast interview, he gives a couple productivity tips that have really helped me in my blogging. The Writer Life is a Battle At 1:41 of the podcast, Pressfield talks about the writing process as... 
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How to Sustain Inspiration in Blogging

Jason Fried from 37signals talks about sustaining inspiration in this speech at around the 19:40 mark. He suggests that inspiration is perishable. He contrasts the lifespan between the actual idea and the inspiration for the idea. The idea lasts forever but the inspiration can go away. He likens inspiration to a perishable good like milk or fruit. Like these goods, inspiration has an expiration date and it doesn’t stay fresh very long. He advises that if you’re inspired about something,... 
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Improve Your Blog’s Brand by Creating New Jargon

Yaro Starak has some great advice for bloggers in one of his recent posts. He advises us to create new jargon for our niche. This strategy builds the perception that we are experts who know what we’re talking about. Also, a new term or buzzword can function like other branding elements such as a logo, blog design, or writing style since the term will remind people of our blog. Borrow Terms From Other Niches You don’t necessarily have to create something completely new. You can take jargon... 
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Why Being Self-Centered Can Actually Help Your Blog

Brian Clark from Copyblogger recently released a free report entitled The Lateral Action Guide to Becoming a Creative Entrepreneur. I just finished reading it and like most of Brian’s stuff, it was very good. I was surprised though at one of his recommendations. He advised aspiring entrepreneurs to be self-centered. He pointed to 37signals, a popular software company that’s become very successful by only creating products that they themselves would find useful. On page 14, he quoted the... 
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