Blog

Update: Guest posts on their way

Last week we announced that some probloggers behind the scenes at Performancing would be aiming to write 20 guest posts within a week.

We are well on our way. Below I’m listing the blogs on which various probloggers have agreed to write. This will be constantly updated until we’ve selected and finished all 20:

Ryan “The Lazy Ass” Caldwell

Travel Rants – 7 Things I Hate About Traveling
Nusuni Dot Com: A. The Four Dimensions of A Link Portfolio B. 9 Ways To Improve Your Link Portfolio
Dieting Battle – Ten Priceless Health Tips For Getting Started and Staying Motivated

Ahmed “The Sure Thing” Bilal

Randa Clay Design – The Art of Niche Linkbaiting
Freelance Writing Jobs – Does Blogging Pay Less Than Traditional Freelance Writing?

David “The Cherry Picker” Peralty

Geeks Are Sexy – HOW TO: Cheap Wireless For Your Xbox 360
Freelance Writing Jobs – What Blog Networks Look For in a Writer?
Net Business Blog – Marketing Your Blog In A Saturated Niche

Dee Barizo

SEO Scoop – How Offline Distribution Channels Relate to SEO
Yehuda – Board Games Are Becoming More Popular
Groovy Vegetarian – How I Became A Vegitarian

Deborah Ng

http://wonderlandornot.net
http://perfectlyshapedlife.com
http://whereisthatmoney.blogspot.com

Chris G.

Vandelay Design – 5 Skills That Boost Your Design Career
Freelance Folder – My Top 5 Biggest Freelancing Mistakes

Basic Blogging Tip: Link-out like a loose lemon

I’ll admit it. In the past, I’ve been stingy with my links.

And I’ll also admit that I’ve been stingy with my links because of Google’s PageRank algorithm.

But Google’s PageRank is a theory surrounded by too many epicycles at this point. And now I realize that I’ve been hurting my websites by being stingy.

No more stinginess.

Here’s why you and I should be liberal with our linking:

1. Linking to other sites in your niche draws attention to your own blog
2. Bloggers are lovers. They need some love to give some love.
3. Free-linking breaks up your stale link-network and dissolves bad patterns
4. Quality linking adds value for your readers and establishes you as an authority
5. Quality linking adds value to the Internet

So forget about PR leakage. Forget about monetizing PR. Start linking out like a loose lemon (a loose lemon is one which is not sour).

How to Easily Prioritize your Projects

You have a to-do list a mile high and no idea how to organize it. Worse still, the requests keep coming in and you just can’t seem to prioritize. Has this happened to you? Here’s my advice for getting a handle on things.

The first thing you should do is ask your boss. Oh, wait. You’re an entrepreneur. You don’t have a boss. When you quit your day job you also quit the opportunity to pass off the responsibility of prioritizing. Don’t panic, though.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed, my best friend reminds me to write out a to-do list to get everything out of my head. Once the stuff is on paper, it never seems as daunting. I can stop worrying and start working.

So the first thing I suggest is to make a list of everything you need to accomplish. At this point, order is not important. Just make sure you get it all down and we will work on order in a minute.

Now that you have it all written down, spend a minute or so considering the following elements:

Time

How long do you think this project will take? Is it a quick fifteen-minute fix or do you need to dedicate a full week to complete it? Projects have a way of mutating once you start working on them, so you don’t have to hold yourself to this. Just try your best to come up with an idea of the amount of time you will need for the task.

Resources

What (or whom) do you need to complete this project? Resources can range from a reserved room for a meeting to those finance numbers that Jim promised to get to you last week.

People are the most difficult resources to work with so make sure you give them plenty of notice regarding what you will need from them. The best organized project ever could fail if Jim doesn’t get those numbers to you before the deadline.

ROI (Return on Investment)

What are the benefits of this project? ROI usually refers to money, but the return on an investment is not always strictly monetary. Perhaps the return is a well-trained team or a more productive department. In any case, the ability to estimate ROI is a very important skill for a project manager in any field. To learn more about it you can check out this article: How to Estimate ROI on a Project.

Urgency

They say that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. As much as you do not want to admit that you deliver Sally the Squeaker’s project before Whenever Wayne’s, this is often the case. If the deadlines and importance are no different, then it will make your life easier to get Sally’s project out of the way first. However, if Wayne’s project is part of a large presentation requested by the CEO, the urgency clearly lies there. Just use your best judgment and you’ll usually come out okay.

These are just some basic factors I consider before creating a definitive to-do list. You might find that not all of these apply or that you prefer a completely different method. Whatever the case, the ability to prioritize plays a major role in the success of an entrepreneur.

How to Make Money from Projects You’ll Never Have Time For

Have you ever had one of your ideas ‘stolen’ and used by someone else soon after you shared them in a public setting? If yes, you’ll know the frustration and anger that accompanies such a case. It could have been when you were in school and someone else stood up and took the credit for your work, or in a professional setting where a colleague took your idea and ran with it (and thus took the credit).

It’s always about ‘the credit’, isn’t it?

Experience tells us to keep our best ideas to ourselves – why give away the store when you can profit from it in the future, right?

The only problem with this approach – the hoarding approach – is that we don’t always have the time to work on all of our ideas. And that means that for every project that we work on, 20+ others go undone, because of a lack of time. So at this point, we’re at a cross-roads – you don’t want to share freely because those are your ideas but you also don’t have the time to work on them.

I don’t believe in giving it all away for free – sure, to some it may sound noble but in terms of value you know that your ideas are worth something, and in most cases, worth more than the goodwill that will be generated from giving them away for free.

An acceptable alternative may be to develop your ideas and then distribute them, for a price. For example, think of Private Label Rights (PLR) products. In theory, PLR products are components of a ready-made business that you can take, personalise and get started with almost immediately (a good example of this would be the PLR articles provided by PLRPro).

Depending on the time available to you, you could develop your ideas to the point of a short 10-page report ($7 value or even free), into a 50-100 page ebook ($19-$49 or again free), into full-fledged running blog (which you can then sell to make a nice profit) or anywhere in between.

Let’s say that I want to get into the self-help niche but don’t have time for it. So what do I do?

Google PageRank Epicycles: Why the value of links is here to stay even if the PageRank theory is dead

Google has this theory called PageRank, just like Ptolemy had a geocentric theory of the solar system.

As with any theory, as anomalies show up in the theory, Google (and geocentric theorists) manually jerryrig their theory with epicycles. Eventually, their theory is going to break down…

…but, mind you, not the reality that their theory is modeling.

In the case of PageRank, Google is manually adjusting the PageRank of high profile sites and using them as “whipping boys” to set an example. But manual adjustment is like throwing in epicycles to save a bad theory.

In reality, links will always retain value because they will always be the most fundamental metric of site popularity. And it will always be true that people will try to gain “perceived” value by purchasing links.

But that’s no different than a college education. Some terribly inept people effectively buy and party their way to a 4 year diploma (anyone can pass through 4 years of college these days) and in effect manipulate the system. They then have credentials to make themselves look valuable to gullible companies who haven’t developed a system for weeding them out.

But the fact is that this phenomenon of passing inept people through college will not destroy the college system. There is nothing good to replace it. And terribly inept people will continue to make it through, landing six figure jobs for which they are not really qualified.

The same holds true for linkage. There is nothing good to replace “the link” when analyzing “value” algorithmically. Links are the fundamental units of inter-site relationships.

Google’s epicyclic solution this time around seems be to penalize the high-profile linkers. It’s a short term solution for a theory that’s on the collapse.

Instead of manual jerryrigging, they should give up the theory and start from scratch.

A good place to start would be a proper analysis of the 4 Dimensions of a Link Portfolio?

In other words, why not buffer the PageRank of sites whose link portfolios are completely out of whack?

That would solve the problem. Webmasters would stop seeing their PageRank go up because of Text Link Ads. The TLA economy would stop perpetuating itself. The bubble would burst. And Google would have done what they normally do well: naturally force the web to conform to principles that encourage quality.

Yes, it is true that a good SEO could simulate the quality of a good link portfolio. Well, good for them. Maybe they’ll even use quality as a method to achieve the simulation…which raises the interesting question of when a simulation becomes the real thing…but that’s another story.

Blogging Productivity Tip: Read Only When You Have Time to Act On It

The idea is simple – do not open your email, visit forums, hit your blog’s comments, open your rss reader, visit your favourite websites…in other words, do not ANY type of ‘input’ in your working hours until you have the time allocated to ‘ACT’ on that input.

For example, it’s common practice for bloggers to open up their email inbox several times a day to ‘scan’ for important emails. Depending on the amount of emails one gets, this can mean a few quick responses and then leaving those emails that require a longer response lying in wait till late night. At night, you might not have the time / energy to write long responses and those emails get left on next day.

Or, when we hit up our RSS reader without scheduling time to blog about any news item we find interesting. What happens if we come across something worth blogging about? It goes in the bookmarks, and those bookmarks keep adding up until you have to do some spring cleaning or the load becomes so overwhelming that you have to dump them and start afresh.

Or…when we hit forums where we network frequently only to browse and not to comment / reply on threads.

All such activities take up time – valuable time – from our daily routine. Instead of checking your email 5 times in 4 minute segments, you could easily check it once a day in 20 minutes, and in that time you will respond to more emails and get more things done than in the 5 short breaks during the day. The same goes for blogging (you’ve already read an article once, and if you leave it for later, you’ll have to read it again. It maybe only a few minutes of time but once you add that time up you can build an amazing debt of time.

I get distracted easily, so it’s a continuous battle to avoid such time wasters, especially when I’m not going to ‘do anything about them’.

If you really need a 5-10 minute break, get off your butt and excercise – if you’re a blogger, you probably need it more than a quick trip to your inbox to check your mail for the 3rd time in the day.

How Do You Train New Bloggers?

If you’ve ever hired a blogger (or 20), you’ll know that it’s not an easy task to get the type of blogging work that you want out of your new people. This is especially the case when you’re an experienced blogger yourself – the urge to micro-manage may be too great to allow you to train your blogger(s) properly.

So what methods / strategies do you use to train bloggers?

Currently I’m using a combination of strategies to bring bloggers up to speed. The first step is to help them find their blogging voice, their personality. To be blunt, it’s just like real life – if you’re an interesting person (a good story-teller), people will enjoy listening to what you have to say. On the other hand, if you’re boring, people will nod their heads politely.

As a blogger, the anonymity offered by the Internet allows our nasty sides to come out and people are far less charitable online when you’re boring (or anything other than a rock star). The key to be successful as a blogger is to develop a unique voice and style – and to polish and keep improving it.

The second step is to build consistency. Quite often you’ll bloggers who either have trouble coming up with stuff to write about day after day, get bored with blogging after a while or whatever reason, tend to take their foot off the pedal. I tend to give writers a lot of room here, because everyone’s blogging rhythm is different.

It’s best to start slow and then build things up, but only to a point where you think you can comfortably sustain it in the long run. I have a tendency of blogging in cycles – 10 posts per day for 2-3 days and 1-2 posts for the rest of the week. Encouraging the habit to a) write regularly and b) spread out your articles is an absolute must if you want someone to take over blogging for you.

The third step is to get bloggers to understand the marketing / promotional side of blogging – what flagship content is, what linkbait is, how to encourage conversations on your blog, how to write great headlines, how and when to focus on quality over quantity (and vice versa), how to use social media sites, why you should link back to your old articles, etc etc. There’s a lot of ground to cover here and this is perhaps a lifelong education.

The fourth step is to help them learn the technical aspect of things. At the start, all they’ll need to know is the basics – comment moderation, how to write / edit posts, using categories, future posting, uploading images, adding links / images into posts, etc. But as time goes on and when you want your bloggers to take over more aspects of your blog, it would also pay to get them interested in theme editing and plugin usage – so that theoretically speaking you can go off for a month-long break and you wouldn’t need to worry about your blog as your hired gun would be able to take care of any problems that pop up.

Why would someone stay if they learn all this? Because not everyone is driven enough to start a new business from scratch – to most people, if you give them excellent terms + plus profit sharing and the freedom to do what they want on the blog (within certain limits, of course), then they will stick with you for life. Bloggers, just like people, need room to grow, so you have to continuously train them and give them more space at the same time.

So, once again…what methods do you use to train your bloggers? Any specific strategies that you’d be interested in sharing?

Also Read:

10 Articles Every Blogger Should Read At Least Once
6 Ways Blogging Differs From Other Types Of Writing

These two articles (list of articles in one case) are a must-read for all my bloggers. Can you add anything to this list?

To Build Lasting Relationships in the Blogosphere, Behave Yourself

We bloggers are a friendly breed. We are always looking to find new readers, and do whatever it takes to build relationships with other bloggers.

Regardless of what people say about online relationships, I believe that online friendships can learn a thing or two from the real world relationships. It’s not like online relationships are a mere networking between faceless computers. There are real people behind computers who share this 3 dimensional world with us.

Considering how difficult it is for many bloggers to make friends through blogging, I’ve made a list of things to do and avoid that will help you make new contacts in the blogosphere.

Things to do and avoid on your blog

Don’t speak authoritatively – Although I believe that having authority in your voice is vital if you want others to take you seriously, it is not wise to assume that you are the boss. It’s your blog, all right, but your readers are not your employees. Whether they visit your blog or not is their personal choice. Nothing is stopping them to quit visiting if they find your words condescending. After all, you don’t pay them to visit.

Be polite and friendly if you want your readers to treat you as a friend. No one really likes to befriend bullies.

Reply to every commenter in person – It ticks me off when I make a comment on a blog (especially when I ask a question) and the blog owner does not care to reply back to me. Comments section on blogs are there for a reason – use them to interact with your readers. There are bloggers who have turned off the commenting option for some silly reason they give, but it’s still understandable. They tell me straight away: read this and move on. No comments allowed. But if you have enabled commenting, you should consider replying to those who take the time to comment on your blog.

As I said, virtual world is not a whole lot different from the real world. In real world, if we talk to someone and get a blank stare in reply, we assume that either that person is too arrogant or a bit on the other side of sanity. This is exactly what I think of the bloggers who don’t care about my comments. I think of them as too proud or too reserved. So, on I move.

Speak in a conversational voice– As opposed to conventional writing, blogs are supposed to be conversational. None of your formal business-like writing rules hold anymore. Therefore, if you want to elicit replies from your readers, talk to them as you would talk to them in the real world.

This is the beauty of blogging. You can be conversational and yet avoid the mistakes you make in real world conversations. It’s writing because you can edit your words and decide what to say and what to hold back. It’s a conversation because you are talking to your readers and you want them to respond to you. You get the best of both worlds!

Call your readers by name – Hearing someone say our name makes us all tingly with excitement. And believe me, this rule holds even in the online communications.

Whenever you reply to your commenters, use their name freely, e.g. “You are right Chris”, “Are you sure Matt?” This gives your comment a human touch, and your readers are delighted to see that you care about them.

Sometimes a commenter leaves his website name instead of his own name, so to find out his real name, visit his website and look under his post titles, in the post meta-data section, or go to his ‘About’ or ‘Contact ‘ page to dig out his real name. Come back and address him by name!

Kick off discussions – Most bloggers do reply to comments but they don’t push the discussion forward. The discussion pattern in comments usually goes like: comment-reply, another comment-reply and so on. If you reply to a commenter and he replies back to you, this is what I call a discussion, or a conversation. But how do you do that?

Simple. Ask questions. Encourage them to reply back, ask them to clear up a point, solve a riddle, expand on their previous comment, etc. This way, you get to know your readers better, pile up comments, make relationships, and get all other social benefits associated with comments.

Things to do and avoid on other blogs

Don’t leave short comments – It’ll only take a moment longer to come up with something worthwhile to say. Comments like “Nice post” and “Good tips” are not helpful. If you are out there to network and build relationships with other bloggers, you’d better add value to their blog.

Reply back – You go out in the blogosphere in commenting frenzy, leave comments on tons of blogs and never check back to see if someone replied to you. Not nice. When you reply to a post, you engage in a discussion, and it becomes your responsibility to keep up with the discussion till the end, or at least as long as others are replying to you.

Return the favor – If a blogger adds something valuable to your discussion, you go and add something valuable to his discussion. If a blogger has been voting you up on all social media/bookmarking sites, you should check out his blog and return the favor. If a blogger has been linking to many of your posts, you should mention his blog in one of your speed-linking posts (if you don’t do such posts, do them). You’ll enjoy giving back as much as you do receiving.

Blogs are platforms for discussions, and the social web thrives on the give and take rule on equality basis. To make friends, and have successful relationships in the blogosphere, you have to be a giving, caring, listening, and a talking human being, not a mere bot who types away post after post incessantly in a hope that people would come in hordes and form a fan club around you.

What’s been your experience in terms of building relationships through blogs?

Mohsin writes at Blogging Bits.

Skip links

Blog

Things to do and avoid on your blog

Things to do and avoid on other blogs

Footer