Blogging

As anyone who has followed my blogs for any time knows, I am a sporadic blogger. This has bothered me. I want to be able to post more. I like to write. I like the social aspects of blogging. There are a lot of things I like about it, but my other life does not allow me to post much during the school year. There are options, though.

I sometimes manage to post for periods just fine. I have created posts that would post at a future date, allowing me to go a while without posting. Other times, I just can't seem to get much out. I suppose that I could post more short meaningless posts, but I don't like to do that much. I've considered closing my blogs, but that just won't do either. I have decided to just like with the fact that they are never going to have very regular postings.

Are their alternatives out there for those of us who love to write, but don't have the time for a regular blog?

Yes. If you find yourself, like me, wanting to write, but not having the time to make frequent blog posts here are some options:

1. Go with it. Yes, the search engines will smile more if you post more. Other will visit more, if you have frequent updates. There are many reasons for frequent updates, but if your purpose in writing is just to write, forget about those and just write. Who cares how sporadic it is.

2. Write for others. There are many other sites out there that you can write for. They already have a regular readership who will get to see your writings. Some examples are:

eHow: In the last year I've written 10 articles here and make between $1 and $3 a month off of them. Every time it reaches $10, I get a check at the end of the month. Not much, but dollar for article, I make more there than I do here.

Demand Studios: Demand Studios owns eHow and other sites. Here you can browse through hundreds of titles. You choose a title and write about it. You get paid between $5 and $20 per article. It is not much, but with the 33 titles I've written, I've made $305.

Squidoo: I've not really gotten into Squidoo, but some people love it. It is kinda cool. You make a single page and promote it. You get paid based on visitors and clicks and other stuff. I think it is the "promote it" part that turns me off. On Demand Studios, there is no promoting to do. With eHow, I can promote, but people find me, even though I don't. I've only written one article on Squidoo and it has made a huge $.03, which I gave to charity.

3. Hire writers. You can hire writers to write for your sites and then, when you have time, you add in your own comments.

oDesk and Text Broker are two options. With each one, you get to look at the copy and ask for revisions. Textbroker has a price set for the quality of the writer. The higher quality a writer, the more that you pay. oDesk, you negotiate directly with the writer. These are also both options for writers to make money on, but textbroker pays very little until you get to level 5 (hard to do) and oDesk requires the writer to install some spyware that I don't wanna use (they can watch you work through your web cam).

Commenting on other peoples blogs is a great way to meet other bloggers and you can also use it as a way to increase traffic to your site. Some bloggers will only comment on blogs that offer follow links. I think you should write on everyone's sites, but there are a couple of rules to follow when making comments. Let's go over them

Comment on many sites. Don't worry if they use follow or no-follow. No-follow means that they set it so that the search engines will not follow the link to your site. Since the search engines ignore the link, it does not increase search engine traffic to you, but this is only a side reason for commenting. Commenting also builds community. You should build up a community of other bloggers that you like to read, frequent their sites and comment on them. Blogging is a lot about making friends.

Comment outside your niche. You might blog exclusively about fashion, but that does not mean that you should only comment on fashion blogs. You should comment on a lot of other fashion blogs, but you should also read and comment on other blogs that you find interesting. You should, for instance, comment on Shabam Development regularly ;).

Make your comments useful. You do not have to have a long comment, but it should not be just "I agree" either. Remember, we are trying to build community here and just saying "here here" does not get them to want to come to your site, read your articles and comment on them. If you don't really have something to say, perhaps you should not say anything. You do not have to comment on everything. If you do have something to say, make it worth saying. If you just say "I agree" then I'm probably going to assume that if I go to look at your site there will not be anything useful there either.

Don't curse. If the author of the blog curses a lot, then it is probably ok to curse. If you curse on a comment to one of my blogs, I will delete it. It will usually be gone within a couple days. If you can't say it without cursing then you probably don't have the knowledge to respond. Cursing does not mean that you are not intelligent, I've known some really intelligent people that cursed every third word, but when they needed to they could speak or write without cursing. There are times when cursing is fine. It is not fine on most peoples blogs. If I would not want my daughter reading it, I will not keep it on my sites.

Don't veil your curses. %#$@ is still a curse. It is also a curse if you abbreviate it. If it is meant as a curse, it is a curse. See above for more on cursing.

Don't put down the writer or his work. It is OK to point out flaws, but putting them down makes them feel bad and makes you look like a jerk. You might be a jerk, but do you want everyone knowing that? Again, if you want people to come see you, you should be nice to them.

Be a jerk and put down others work and the author. Alright, this contradicts the above. I can't do this, but some people can be a jerk and get away with it. If your style is of the jerk nature, then go ahead and attack others. This is a way to get others to link to you and talk about you. If you are a jerk and do it well then you will get a lot of "see what a jerk this guy is" type links. If that is how you write on your blog, write that way in your comments. Just be aware that some bloggers might delete the post. For me, it would depend on the wording. If I would be worried about a child reading it, I'll delete it. I usually leave the jerk posts, as long as they are not cursing.

I have several blogs. One wildly unpopular education blog, one about Christian Family life and sustainability, this technology blog, and a brand new one which is attached to a contest database. I was looking at the stats for my sites and based on those stats considered making some changes. Before those changes were made, I wanted to check further into the stats. Tired Garden and Shabam Development are the only ones with decent traffic, so we will just look at them. Contest Farm is brand new and Shabam School I don't write on much.

Shabam Development has had 23,176 page views in the last year. My sustainability blog, 32,326. At first glance that might seem like I should spend a little more time on Tired Garden, but work on both. But let's consider something I forgot to mention. While Tired Garden is over a year old, Shabam Development is only 6 months old. Now that would seem to make things different. Especially if you just look at the last month. In the last month, Shabam has had 10,751 page views and Tired Garden 2208. Ok, that settles it, I'm ditching Tired Garden and working solely in Shabam!

Wait, not yet! Shabam had 23,176 page views in 6 months and 10,751 of those in the last month? Half of the reads were in the last month? Is there a spike? Yes. I have one wildly popular rant that has received 15,047 reads in total, 9,649 of those in the last month. It is a popular article and garners me a lot of traffic, mostly from Stumble Upon (16 reviews and 35 thumbs up). If I cut out this one article my traffic on this site plummets to 5398 page views in the last month. Still better than Tired Garden.

Considering that I have worked hard to build the traffic for Tired Garden and have let Shabam Development sit, even not writing on it for 2 months, I think that this tells me somthing. With little to no work on Shabam and lot of work on Tired Garden, even ignoring the one anomaly, Shabam got 3190 more page views last month than Tired Garden.

Now this tells me that writing more on Shabam is a good thing. In another article I will be analyzing the type of articles that are getting the best views for me and I will be altering my writing based on this. I will also look at other important factors, such as which articles get comments and which have outside links.

Don't you hate it when people blog about not blogging? I know I do. It is a useless post. If you are not going to blog, just don't blog. I don't care that your not blogging, I don't care why. I'm sure your wart removal surgery is keeping you from blogging, I'm glad your daughters new husband is recovering well. Whatever your reason you can't blog, just don't. On the other hand, if you are going to take the time to actually write a blog, write something useful.

We are all out looking for useful blogs, right? We go to tech blogs to read reviews, get ideas, etc. We don't go to tech blogs to read about not being able to blog because you were helping your mother mow the grass on the roof of her garage. We go to gardening blogs to read information on finding purple sweet potatoes and planting a 12 month garden, not to read about not being able to blog because your computer died and you had to fix it.

Now that I've ranted about how annoying it is to blog about not blogging, I just wanted to say that I realize I've not written much in a few months. I've also looked at my stats recently and seen that I'm getting a lot of traffic for a site I'm not really maintaining. I've also received a few nice comments from people saying that they appreciate some of the guides I've created. I'll do my best to add more guides to the site. Thanks for all the nice comments too. I hope to be able to be a little more active in the coming months.