Networking is a huge thing for the problogger especially with the web becoming more social. Internet business is now closely mirroring the offline business world. Whoever has the most quality contacts wins. Whoever has the most friends gets the traffic, links, subscribers, and money.

Networking helps in many ways. Whether you need quality links, marketing advice, or someone to keep you accountable, networking can help you reach your goals while also making blogging much more enjoyable. We're social creatures after all. And blogging for bucks can be a lonely endeavor.

If you're new blogger, networking is especially crucial because those early days can be discouraging. Maybe you've got some experience under your belt. However, your network is not working out as well as you had hoped for. You're not getting the links. Your current blogger friends are not responding to your emails. It's time to find better contacts.

Web apps and open source programs are not your biggest asset. Your biggest asset is your IM list, email addresses, and social media friends.

So where can you find quality bloggers to network with? Here are a couple places.

Read the rest of this entry

A while back I wrote a post titled 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read where I listed the 10 articles that I generally show to all my bloggers when they first start.

Since writing that article, I've come up with a list of 7 specific tips for writing the perfect blog post. These tips are simple yet are designed to maximize the effort that each writer puts into his or her writing. The goal of each tip: to increase the number of people who read and engage the material.

7 Easy Tips To Maximize The Effect Of Each Blog Post

1. Wherever natural, eliminate pronouns and replace with descriptive nouns.

The idea with this tip is to help the search engines identify the semantics of your article. Nouns help specify your article and also reduce the noise-to-signal ratio. For the most part, think of pronouns in the same way as clunky, excessive HTML code -> they keep your article from reaching it's highest potential.

2. Choose Highly Descriptive Titles For Your Articles

This is not news to most of you, as it is the most heavily emphasized optimization strategy around. However, I usually add a few pointers such as the fact that in my experience an ideal title length is usually 4-7 words long. The title should accurately reflect the content of the article, but also hone in on the most important keyword phrases.

Instead of "She's Hot Like That..." you might choose "Scarlett Johansson Looks Hot As A Blond"

3. Reinforce Your Headline Keywords In The First Paragraph

So you've chosen a rock solid headline. Well, you shouldn't stop there. In the first paragraph of your article, you should supplement your title with:

A) an exact phrase match of a portion of your title (Every guy in the world thinks Scarlett Johansson looks hot.)
B) an additional sprinkling of keywords (But as a blond, Scarlett isn't just hot...she's smokin')

Read the rest of this entry

A few week ago everything was going well. I was pretty healthy, had many clients and assignments, and I was working with an organization specialist to organize my office space. A few days ago things changed. I had several tests done and diagnosed with some serious illnesses. I have been told that I will require at least one surgery if not more. I am not prepared.

I am prepared for the trials ahead of me. I have arranged care for my children, taken care of housework, and researched different options available to me. I am NOT prepared for the effect it will have on my work. As soon as I found out, I notified clients. I unfortunately had to cancel a few assignments I was excited about, including a travel blog that I would have loved. I hired a few other writers to finish up a few articles I needed as it was a one time client and felt it would be better to hire out than to upset the client. I did not want this client to think badly of me or expect other writers to flake out as well.

Illness is not the only emergency we should be prepared for. Other emergencies may include computer crash, internet failure, sick child, death in family, or natural disaster (or fire). Are you prepared for an emergency? Here are a few things that all freelance writers and bloggers should do before an emergency occurs.

• Join forums and participate regularly so other writer will learn about you. When people "know" you they are more willing to help in an emergency. This will also help you know which writers are reliable and provide quality work when other writers recommend them.
• Have back up posts ready for your blogs. Writing extra posts that can be posted at any time will give you time in case you are unable to write for a few days. The goal should be a weeks worth of posts, as you don't know how long the emergency will be.
• Be organized. Have a list of all articles or blogs you need done with a list of due dates. Keep this list in an easily accessible area. If you use a computer system, print a hard copy just in case something happens to your computer.
• Have a list of all clients email addresses or phone numbers printed out, so they can be reached easily. If you are injured and can't get to your computer, having the list on your desk will allow a spouse or friend access to it to notify your clients for you.
• Be ahead of deadline. If at all possible, do not wait until the day before deadline to start your work. If you are ahead of schedule, you are less likely to miss a deadline if an emergency happens.

After my illness is under control, I hope to return to writing and blogging regularly. If I had been dishonest with my clients, or not reliable before the illness, they would be less likely to take me back. I notified my clients immediately, instead of waiting until deadline hoping I would be able to complete the assignments. The lack of pay will hurt, but losing clients because of a missed deadline would hurt more.

What have you done to prepare for an emergency?

I was blogging for a new website for three weeks when I was informed my services were no longer needed. The website owner expected to make more money than he was (in the three weeks it was live) and could not afford to keep me. "Thats the breaks" I was told. It is, and I understand that. I didn't understand not trying to keep it going for another month or two. I offered to even write for free for two months. He shut the website down anyway.

What makes me most sad about this, was I loved writing on the topic. It was a pregnancy website and I loved to write about pregnancy. I loved researching new products, finding more resources, and sharing my experiences. So I decided to start my own. Immediately, I ran into a huge problem. My new blog needed a name.

I didn't want just a pregnancy blog on a big free blogging site. I wanted a unique web address that would be simple, to the point, and cute. For me, this has been a difficult task. I know what I want to blog about, I just don't know what to call the blog. After several weeks of thinking and asking for opinions, I settled on a name, went and bought the domain name, and that is it. I second guessed myself and have not pursued it any further.

So many wonderful bloggers are able to create unique and sometimes witty names for their blogs. How do you name your blogs? Is there a special formula you use? Is there a particular method to choosing a name?

In the last few days there has been a lot of press about the prospects of a labor union for bloggers and/or writers. The conversation really took off yesterday with the TechCrunch article Is Blogging Ready For a Unionized Workforce?.

The basic concern is that most bloggers are working for pennies an hour while a handful of probloggers and blog owners are raking in the dough. In other words, most bloggers are working at slave wages. So maybe a union would help raise wages?

Read the rest of this entry

La historia de un joven escritor, como afición.
Incluyo entradas a diario, imagenes, las noticias mas importantes del día.

Text Link Ads have been on my mind ever since The Link Nazi made it public that Google would be cracking down on sold links.

Many individual bloggers make the majority of their income from Text Link Ads. But I want to talk about another virtue of Text Link Ads: they can generate the revenue that publishers need to hire better writers.

If you're like me and you own a large number of blogs and websites, then you also know all about the economy of content creation. For those of you who don't know, let me educate you.

The fact of the matter is that search engines have yet to create the algorithm that can distinguish keyword rich crap from literary greatness. Since AdSense has been the main driver of content monetization, and since traffic is the key AdSense monetization, website owners have often resorted to buying lots of keyword loaded crap in preference to a few high-quality articles written by professional writers.

For $100 you can buy 1 or 2 excellent 500-1000 word articles or for $100 you can buy about 30 pieces of just legible English written by not quite fluent non-English speakers (not to offend any of our not quite fluent non-English readers). That's just a fact and the explosion of crap content on the web is directly attributable to the economy that Google AdSense has created. It is Google's monster. There's no doubt about it.

Enter Text Link Ads. The TLA economy doesn't directly depend on traffic, and so doesn't depend on squeezing pennies out of the long tail. There is far more pressure from AdSense to create lots of crap content then from TLA. In fact, I'd argue that TLA creates an environment in which owners of blog networks, or multiple sites are freed up to migrate from content churning to actually being proud of the content they commission.

In my own case this is certainly true. TLA has finally gotten me to a place where I have the luxury of paying a premium for the content I commission. Rather than pursuing bulk content, I'm pursuing quality content. Worshiping the long-tail, in the name of almighty AdSense is no longer a priority. Creating good literary content is.

Because of TLA I now feel like a legitimate publisher, whereas before I had to wash my hands of AdSense blood each night before I went to sleep (well, not really, but you get the point).

Everywhere I register online I am always me. My username is always a variation on "Chris", "chrisg" or "Chris Garrett". Right back to my BBS and Usenet days up to now. The only time I can think of where that has not been true has been Digg.

I have nothing against nicknames, people use them for a variety of reasons, not least because their real name is already taken. That said many people have pseudonyms on Digg because they want to stealth-promote their websites for the traffic boost. The idea is you can seem an impartial third party who just really finds the viagra-pr0n-ipod blog particularly fascinating. This is bad for any number of reasons but I realised it could be killing Digg by removing trust from the community. If you take trust out of any activity surely you are in danger of destroying the social fabric of that activity?

I think Bloggers especially are in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. So many of us are hooked on the sweet sweet Digg traffic high that we are using Digg for what we can get out of it and the whole system is being subverted. We need to stop this Diggaddiction before we all become junkies.

An addiction in itself is not necessarily that damaging. It's the side-effects of that addiction that trouble me, the ever-increasing desperate attempts to recreate the initial Digg-effect hit. The manic dependency on the high and the temptation to create an army of sock-puppet Digg accounts. The eventual Digg meltdown where half the "people" you meet on the site are fake.

From now on I am going to treat Digg no different to any other online community. I have registered as chrisgarrett (feel free to friend me). I will Digg up your stories if I find them interesting.

This is not me being all fluffy-bunny-blogger-transparent for the sake of it! Of course I am saying all this for completely selfish reasons. I enjoy Digg immensely and find it incredibly useful as a resource. Several times a day I check in with Digg to see what interesting new sites have been posted up and to take part in the discussions. The entertainment and research value of Digg would be incredibly damaged if the promotional aspect gets too much influence.

I just don't want to see Digg full of spam.