Run Your Blog, Don’t Let It Run You

There will by times when you really have absolutely nothing to write about, and you may miss your consistent blog post schedule.  It's okay.  It really is. Gary Vaynerchuk Says To Hustle A recent speech by Gary Vaynerchuk has him telling everyone that in order to make it, you have to hustle.  And while it's true, you shouldn't let it drive you to the point of insanity. I've had many blogs before this one, and I would often find myself...

I often hear people say, "If I had more time, I'd do this." or "I've got so many other things going on, there is no way I can do that." These are all just excuses to make yourself feel better about not getting something done. How many of you will make time to watch television every night? How many will make the time to go out to the bar or club at night to party with your friends? These are the same people who will always say, "I just d...

I spent the past two days working on a blog post about what to include at the bottom of each post, and for proof that I'm not perfect, I completely left out the most important element (right after the call to subscribe). So, while in a panicked state, I'm writing this post to let you in on the left out secret. Read the first half of this post here. The Ever Popular Related Articles Adding related articles to the end of your blog post wi...

If you'll notice below each post of my blog, there are links that allow you to perfom different actions.  And you're probably asking yourself, "How do I choose which options to use there?" There are bloggers that don't put anything because the endless options that exist create frustration and confusion. There is an old saying I like to use when deciding what I want to add and how much I want to add. "The confused mind does not buy," Simp...

For at least the past week, both John from JohnChow.com, and Darren from ProBlogger.net have been using a new function of aweber to make a Lightbox Newsletter opt-in form popup. They've seen alot of positive response from using it and have also seen gains of at least 4 times the number of previous subscribers. I'm not a big fan of popups because they're very instrusive, but this one seems to have a setting so it only displays once for each vi...

For those of you new to my blog, I wrote a couple of posts some time ago talking about my love for the Mint statistics program, as well as ways to secure your wordpress blog. Minty Fresh Even with my love for Mint, I've never thought to look for a wordpress plugin so I don't have to type another url to access my stats. Today is my lucky day. That little wordpress plugin rss feed on my blog admin panel had a plugin called Minty Fresh, so...

I get asked many questions each day about what the best monetization programs to use are, or what the best topics to blog about are, and even questions by people asking how to get better rankings in the search engines.  But the number one question I get is, "What can I do to increase traffic to my blog?" So here is a "Top 8 List" of what I do to increase my blog traffic.  And remember the key is to be everywhere. Spend 30 Minutes on Twit...

The first thing you should do when starting a new blog is to write your "About Me" page.  The "About Me" page will probably be viewed by everyone that ever visits your blog and reads your articles.  It is essential to helping you to connect to you readers. Use your "About Me" page to sell yourself to your readers.  Take the opportunity to let them know you're the expert when it comes to the topics in your niche, and that your blog is the pl...

If you're like me, you're probably always looking for the best of the best when it comes to a great statistics/analytics product for your blog or website.  I've been using Google Analytics for a few years now, and I'm not impressed at all.  While I have no way of proving it, I feel like it's not accurately reporting the right numbers for me, so within the last month I've been searching like a mad man for a better product to use for this blog. ...

Have you ever been surfing the internet only to come across a blog that has an article, or a couple of articles, that are the exact same as yours? This is calling content scraping, and believe it or not, it happens all the time. I like to compare content scraping to a potluck dinner.  They all attract people who have no intention of bringing a damn thing, only to sit and eat all the chicken and potato salad they can get their grubby little...

Being as knowledgeable as I am about things like SEO, Permalinks, Wordpress, and such, I sometimes tend to not think of things in the same manner as those who aren't as knowledgeable.  So it doesn't surprise me that I never thought about the fact that some people don't know what a permalink does, much less how to use them for search engine optimization. A friend of mine has just recently started his own blog.  A friend that is a computer pro...

Although blogging can be fun, you also run many security risks that can leave you dead in the water.  No one likes to think it can happen to them, but the truth is, it can.  It's not a matter of if, but when, especially if you your blog is vulnerable. I've done alot of research into security vulnerabilities with wordpress and have come across some shocking information, including things you have probably never heard of.  So I've compiled a c...