Blogging
Pro Bloggers: Beware!
Yesterday, I saw a really interesting post over on Web Fugitive which contained a warning to bloggers about the bankruptcy of the Chicago Tribune. Here’s the premise:
Traditional media are losing their shorts due to the paradigm shift brought on by the Internet plus the economic recession. More and more career reporters will be losing their jobs and hence looking for their next thing. Many of them will turn to blogging. They are already good at what they do. They have connections due to their reporter position. Essentially, they’re coming into the blogging fray with a huge leg up.
So, the article says:
So to all the career bloggers – or even the casual ones like myself; If you don’t step your game up, you are going to get stomped. Maybe not today – or a year from now, but it’s going to happen. This is the starting line gunshot, and you are getting a head start. Make the most of it.
Since my blog (this site) is primarily about blogging for money, this is something that my readers need to take note of. If you want to be a hobby blogger, then by all means just enjoy yourself. If, however, you’re using your blog as a means to further your business ambitions, you need to step up your game. There is competition coming – and potentially lots of it.
With an economic downturn, I fully believe the Internet as a money-making medium will be even more popular than it is now. A lot of those people are going to turn to blogging as a cash source. Many of them will not realize that this is real work and those guys will fall by the wayside. But, a horde of former reporters coming into the fray is something to watch. These guys know how to do this stuff. They’ll need to learn the ropes specific to the online medium, but they’ll learn it.
I practically laugh out loud at those people who declare blogging as a dying medium. They’re imbeciles who haven’t a clue. Blogging has a lot of growth ahead of it.
Some people get it. Others don’t.
Busy Blogger on The Go – Blogging From Anywhere
The picture above was taken while enjoying a cup of coffee up on top of the Space Needle in Seattle. While I was up there, I was able to send some tweets, check my email and record a video. And yes, the coffee was a key ingredient to the equation. 
One of my absolute favorite things about being a professional blogger is that I can more or less do what I do from anywhere. With the proper equipment, I can run my business from home, from a coffee shop, from the beach or from the mall.
My home base is my home office. There I have the fiber optic connection to the Internet and a super fast Mac Pro to work on. However, usually at least once per week, I’ll take off and head to a coffee shop for a change of scenery. I bring the Macbook Pro with me and I can do anything that I could do from home, albeit with less screen space.
My portable dot-com lifestyle also includes the following equipment:
- The Flip Video Mino. I use this to record videos on the go. I can just pop the camera into the USB port of any machine, offload the videos, and quickly upload them to the Internet. Since both of my Macs have iMovie 08, I can even do my video editing wherever I might be.
- Iphone 3G. The Iphone is a blogger’s phone. I run Twitterific or Twinkle for keeping tabs on Twitter. I have the Facebook app so that I can keep up with Facebook on the go. The Wordpress app allows me to blog from the phone if I’m brave enough to use the tiny keyboard for a whole post. I can snap photos and upload them to either TwitPic or my Flickr gallery. Of course, I use Safari to get to anything else. I could even use the iPhone for Internet access if I dare go up against the AT&T tethering policies.
Making money online means I am making money whether I’m plugged in or not. I don’t have to be working in order to make a sale. However, when I do work I can do it from literally any location on the planet with an Internet connection. I haven’t yet gotten an aircard for the laptop to connect from anywhere, but may consider that in the future.
As I type this post, I am sitting out in my family room with the baby typing on the MacBook Pro. So, the dot com lifestyle even means I can sit here and deal with a crying baby while I blog. Hhhm….that part I could probably do without. 
Go Go Go! Become a Blogger is Launched!
I have told you about Yaro Starak’s AWESOME free report: The Roadmap. I checked out their report for a second time yesterday and got even more out of it this time. At the beginning, they talk about some pretty obvious stuff. They’ve got to lay the groundwork, after all. But, after that, Gideon gets into some seriously good strategy stuff for your blog. Really good stuff – not your typical free report.
I do this stuff for a living, and they taught me some things I didn’t think of.
Anyway, right now, Yaro and Gideon are launching their premium membership program and, for a short time, it is only $27. AND they’re offering two free bonuses, but only if you act within the next 24 hours. Actually, about 23.5 hours as of this blog post.
Over 1,300 of my readers have checked this thing out this week. Now, I want you to check out their blogger program. I am a SERIOUS blogger and I make really good money doing it. I want YOU to be able to do the same.
Yaro and Gideon have truly taken their online tutorial videos to the next level. Inside their new program, you’ll discover: [this part is direct from them, but I wanted to pass it on]
- Clever tricks for getting top search engine results for your blog posts…
- Exactly how to get images onto your blog in the right format, size and shape…
- Easy-to-follow instructions for getting streaming audio onto your blog…
- Hold-you-by-the-hand" tutorials for producing professional quality videos and getting them onto your blog quick and easy, without any hassle…
- Powerful content creation techniques for attracting hordes of daily new traffic to your blog…
- Simple methods for driving multiple streams of highly qualified traffic to your blog…
- Step-by-step instructions for making a consistent income from your blog using all the latest social media strategies…
- And Much MUCH more…
So, enough of that. I wouldn’t post here about it if I didn’t believe it was worth your time.
Go Go Go! Sign up in the Next 24 Hours.
Oh yeah, and in a week, their price goes up. Thought I’d tell ya. Go!
Blogger Roadmap In Audio Format
I just got word from Gideon Shalwick from Become A Blogger that they’ve just released the audio version of their, now slightly famous, Roadmap To Become A Blogger.
Apparently, this report has already been downloaded 6,746 times, and it’s not even been two days yet! That’s awesome.
It looks like the report has gone viral, so people must really be loving the information inside it. One of my own commenters on this blog (Anthony Lawrence) even commented:
You know, I usually expect that kind of thing to be a useless teaser hawking something else (which often isn’t anything of value either) but that was actually pretty good stuff.
Yeppers! So, head over there now if you haven’t gotten the report already, Now, you’ll get the report as well as the audio version. Good stuff!
If you’ve already signed up for The Roadmap report, Gideon will have already sent you a link to the audio file. So, no need to sign up twice…
My Favorite Bullcrap User Comment Of The Week
As a blogger, I deal with user comments all the time. All bloggers want comments, of course. Once your blog is getting any traffic, it will usually become the target of comment spam. I moderate comments on my sites just to make sure spam doesn’t get through. I also use the Akismet spam filter which comes with Wordpress and it is a real life-saver. But, Akismet isn’t perfect and it is subject to being gamed. For that reason, I moderate.
Moderating comments means that, sometimes, I find some real winners. One was posted on this blog. The name given was “Infiniskese” and his comment was:
Hi. I repeatedly scan this forum. This is the head period unequivocal to ask a ridiculous.
How multifarious in this forum are references Nautical port behind, artful users?
Can I bank all the advice that there is?
Uuumm….yeah. Makes no sense to me, either. It is almost as if some automatic comment spammer program was running out of system memory. Or somebody used some online translator which has no understanding of English whatsoever.
Thanks for the laugh, Infiniskese.
Bonus Comment
Another one I want to make an example out of:
dear friend,
it was so nice to stop by your wonderful work.
its so informative and useful.
i wish you to visit my blog and tell me your opinion.
[blog URL removed by Dave]
thanks and good luck
Look, people, blog comments are a CRAPPY way to try to get SEO juice so don’t try. Secondly, post meaningful comments. I’m not saying this as a rule for this blog; it is just good advice for your own reputation when posting comments on any blog.
Something tells me that this comment was submitted by a software robot. It was also a Blogspot blog address, probably a spam blog the guy is using as an outpost for ads.
Free Report: “Roadmap to Become a Blogger”
I have been a long time reader of Yaro Starak. He has been talking about making money as a blogger long before I was. In fact, I can honestly say that he was part of my inspiration to even begin blogging about what I do for a living.
Today, Yaro, in combo with Gideon Shalwick, is releasing their brand new, FREE report entitled:
The Roadmap to Become a Blogger
This report is fantastic (I was able to get a sneak peak before today). The Roadmap report covers two key concepts:
- The step-by-step "formula" that Yaro Starak used to create his amazingly successful blog
- Thirteen X-Factor strategies that you can implement immediately to put your blog into superdrive!
Yaro Starak generates a six figure income every year by blogging. Now, so do I, but he does better than I do (I’m fairly sure of that) and therefore he is a guy I pay attention to as well.
So, grab your copy. Again, it’s a freebie.
50 Rapid Fire Tips For Power Blogging
I have been blogging for a living for many years now. I’ve learned a lot and, today, I wanted to throw out a bunch of quick tips in rapid succession. The goals here are (1) get lots of traffic to your blog and (2) earn money with it.
OK, here we go (in no particular order):
- Use Wordpress. No other platform is as flexible with all the plug-ins, in my opinion.
- Post often. I usually default to one post per day, when I’m asked. I try to do at least one per day on this blog, except for weekends.
- Use catchy blog post titles. Put yourself in the shoes of a person who is casually surfing the Internet, seeing your post along with hundreds of others. Will your blog headline stand out? Copyblogger is an awesome source for information on writing.
- Ask open ended questions. One of the best ways to invite commentary on your posts is to ask for it. Ask your readers questions and tell them to answer in the form of a comment.
- Comment on other blogs – often. I actually maintain a separate folder in Google Reader for relevant blogs I want to follow more closely than others. And, on those blogs, I comment regularly whenever I have something to say.
- Use Twitter. You’ve GOT to be out there, being social. Friendfeed, too.
- Use Twitterfeed to pipe your latest posts into Twitter. But, don’t ONLY use Twitterfeed. You’ve got to be a real person on Twitter, first and foremost. Twitter should not replace RSS.
- Make your RSS feed obvious, above the fold, and preferably use the orange RSS icon.
- Provide an RSS-to-Email option so people can subscribe to your latest posts without being forced to use an RSS reader. Many people still don’t use RSS. Feedburner provides a free RSS-to-Email service.
- Use images in your posts. Images communicate on aesthetic wavelengths words cannot.
Click Here To Continue Reading »
What Do I Do All Day? [Problogger]
I was asked a funny question privately by (you might have guessed it) my wife. See, on Sunday, I went on a huge writing spree and basically wrote all of my posts for this blog for this week in one sitting. I don’t know if it’s a gift or what. It feels natural to me. But, when I really have something to say, I can sit down and pump out 4 or 5 blog posts in a matter of 3 hours. But, in telling my wife that, she asked:
So, what do you do the rest of the week?
I thanked her, yet again, for giving me so many ideas for blog posts. Because it is a fair question. If I call myself a blogger, then the logical conclusion is that I write for a living. You might think that writing my posts for the week would mean I’m done. Well, no.
And herein lies the REAL work and the REAL insight in how you can generate a full-time income by blogging. There is a LOT more to it than writing your blog posts. The blog is only a means to an end.
In looking at what I do other than writing blog posts, here is a list (not all inclusive):
- Answering emails
- Accounting tasks
- Consulting work (not all bloggers do this, but I used to be a paid PHP programmer. I still have one client left and I am in the process of offloading that client. I am writing a lot of documentation work for the next programmer.)
- Tracking statistics and making strategic decisions based on the stats
- Staying involved in social media (Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook) – involvement in the community is important for a problogger
- Reading & Commenting on other blogs
- Staying informed on strategies, trends, news
- Creating marketing campaigns for my products on my blogs
- Creating videos and premium content for PCMech University
- Site maintenance, optimization, fixes, design changes, etc.
- Recording my weekly radio news bytes
- Networking, business travel
The business of being a professional blogger is probably only about 10-15% actual blogging.
How Much Work is Being a Professional Blogger?
As another part of my wife’s interview of me this week had to do with how much I work. She said in her post:
I guess one of the downsides of having a spouse as an entrepreneur is that he works a lot. Forget 9 to 5, it’s more like 8 to 10 with food breaks in between.
This is true. Of me anyway. My typical day starts with getting up around 7:30 AM. I usually do a quick email check, then attend to normal personal things like breakfast, walking the dog, and spending a little time with my daughter. I usually start my day around 9AM and work until around 6PM, with a lunch break in the afternoon. Then, at nighttime, after 8PM, I usually spend a little time on the laptop working on something. So, I guess I’m working, on average, a 10 hour day.
But, that’s me. It doesn’t mean everybody does it this way nor does it mean I have to. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Bloggers: It’s Important To Be Yourself
I had an interesting conversation with my wife a few days ago. She is starting up a new blog, but she wanted to maintain her anonymity. She wasn’t going to hide her name, but she didn’t want to be herself. She wanted to put forth an image that wasn’t really her.
It got me thinking about this one thing that I believe wholeheartedly:
People follow and do business with PEOPLE, not businesses.
In other words, people want to deal with real people, not a big corporation or something that is fake or artificial.
And taken back to the idea of blogging, people are more likely to want to follow you if (a) they’re interested in what you’re saying and (b) they LIKE you.
That means you gotta be a real person. You want to show personality. You want to let people into your daily life – at least somewhat. You want people to know who you really are. Because it is that person – you – who your readers are going to develop a compassion for.
A lot of people have the instinct of clamming up. They don’t want to share details of their lives. They want to remain super private. They want to hide. If that’s you, fine! But don’t try to be a big-time blogger.
You will see on this site that I do post things about my life. Not everything I do is focused around blogging. I have a family. We do things offline. I bring my Flickr pictures into this website. I participate in Twitter. I even do videos of things that I do while offline. These things let you guys – my readers – into my personal life so you can get to know who I am. I have control over how far things go. There are things you’ll never see me put on the Internet. But, I’m not hiding and I don’t have a problem with people getting to know me like that.
You’ll find that when you, as a blogger, let your personality hang out there that you will get more readers. People can sense whether you’re real or not. And, in the same way that reality TV attracts the audience, your life can also attract an audience. Not in a stalker way, but in a way that people come to admire you and they may identify with you. Sure, you may piss somebody off sometimes for being a little too real for their tastes, but whatever. You probably cannot grow your blog without pissing off somebody.
My wife is a beautiful person and she has literally no reason to want to clam up and be super private about her personality or her life. Obviously, like me, there are things she probably wouldn’t share (and for the sake of my reputation, that’s probably best ), but I hope that she’ll get over that initial fear about strangers knowing her better and open up.
And you do the same if you want to develop a reader base on the Internet.
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
