I initially began the blog with a 20% desire to help others, and 80% to cynically make the kind of money the A-list bloggers are making. – Urban Monk.net I stumbled upon an interesting blog, Urban Monk, several days ago. As I read the brief history of the blog, I felt harmony with the passion and…

A couple months ago, I wrote a newbie’s guide to blogging to help you get started with blogging. If you’ve been blogging for a little while now, you might be looking at how you can take the next step. To that end, this post offers 10 ways to “pimp” your blog, both in the…

We live in a blogging world. Whether you’re a business startup, an established business, a freelancer, an intern, a musician, or anyone else, blogging can help you: Make your name or brand visible Connect with others in your business or interest Reach out to the public about issues you’re passionate about Express yourself Update…

Introspection, and self-actualization are two thought processes that are very unique to the human species. You may be surprised to learn that one of the best ways to discover your potential is to somehow keep track of your progress as well as your thoughts in various instances of life. The reason that blogging happens to…

Chances are, if you’re a blogger, you’ve heard about Microsoft’s free blogging tool, Windows Live Writer (WLW). In case you haven’t heard about it, WLW is an offline WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) blogging tool that integrates very nicely with most blogging platforms, allowing you to create and edit blog…

In our era where there’s a million new things on the web everyday competing for attention, how do you get attention? Do Good. Take for instance Collis Ta’eed, an Australian freelance web designer, who like just about every other web designer started one of those Web 2.0 sites. Nice, but nothing special, just another blip on…

When you meet someone, like a client or peer, do you immediately Google them? I don’t exactly do that, but when I was responding to internet ads for sharehousing I found myself submitting people’s emails into Myspace’s people search. It’s amazing what you can find out about a person through these things, and you should…

The great thing about the Firefox browser is when you have a problem, there is usually a solution in the form of an extension. As a blog writer, I’ve been using a few that smooth out the experience and get rid of a few annoyances. Here are a few suggestions. Collecting Google Notebook – Highlight the…

Selling Subscriptions to Your Blog If you’re giving away subscriptions for free, why is it so hard to get subscribers? Well, because there is a cost to subscribing, and the cost is in the form of people’s most valuable currency, time. If you want more RSS subscribers to your blog, then you will need to…

We’ve mentioned quite a few ideas on how to write a good blog post and maintain a readable blog. It’s not the most apparent information to new bloggers, particularly when it comes to writing styles. Generally you can lead off the blogs you read and take inspiration from, but if you are looking for some idea…

If you’re a blogger, then you probably know about the power of the Wordpress platform. Straight out of the box, Wordpress is one of the best solutions for blogging. It has a number of SEO benefits built straight into the software. However, the smart blogger knows how to optimize Wordpress for even further performance using…

Ah, another 101 list. You’ll remember our 101 Steps to Becoming a Better Blogger and 101 Essential Freelance Resources from FreelanceSwitch. This one is a well organized list of resources to get your blog running hot. Although having 101 essential items of anything is a bit overkill, this is more a comprehensive list of options…

Something that almost inevitably happens to bloggers starting out their own niche site, is they run out of stuff to say. Generally, as a new blogger, you can shoot for around 3-4 months of solid content until the ideas begin escaping you. This could possibly be caused by the lack of one or more of these: 1…

Why Brand Your Blog? Do you get frustrated when visitors to your site don’t convert into subscribers? For many bloggers, not all, success equals an engaged and high volume readership, and/or making money from their blog. If you fall into either of those categories then you can benefit from improving the brand of your blog. This…

I have noticed that the most successful bloggers online have all taken similar steps in becoming great bloggers. After lots of research and study, I can also tell you that blogging is much more complex than it seems to be on the surface. However, with a bit of effort, I believe anyone can become a successful…