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eXtra For Every Publisher

Tips on Being a Better Blogger

Freedom or Chains in BloggingOctober 22

While blogging for other people, I realized that it isn’t as easy to blog for yourself and because of that difference in difficulty many bloggers don’t succeed.

People always assume that I have great freedom thanks to my writing on various sites saying things like “it must be nice to get paid to write about what you love” and while it can sometimes be amazing, there are other times when you are pushing out content that is just to satisfy your need for a pay check, and it is at that point where you feel the heavy chains of blogging holding you down.

Recently, while on Freelance Writing Jobs Radio, I realized how I haven’t really made it to that transitionary point that most of the other well known bloggers I know have been able to do. The point where they have been running their own blog for so long, as well as other sites, that they are able to leverage that brand and go out on their own and be successful.

I don’t know if this is laziness on my part, or fear, but I still constantly and consistently work for others, and so I had to defend network/company backed blogging as a career option on the show. The others played it off as something bloggers at the start of their career do, but I have been employed to blog full time by one company or another for the last three years, and it doesn’t look like that will change much any time soon.

For me, there has always been some entity above

Economy in Shambles: Blogger OpportunityOctober 17

Despite the economy not heading in the direct that we would like it to head in, this shift has created many new opportunities for bloggers and web workers in general. While marketing and advertising budgets will be the first to go in many companies, the side effect might be an increasing number of affiliate programs, where bloggers can start promoting the sale of various brand name products for a cut of the proceeds, becoming, in effect, the new marketing and sales team for many companies struggling to maintain a profitable balance sheet.

If you have ideas on how to make money online, your opportunity is at hand. You might have been or be looking at a potential layoff, so why not find some free time and spend it on building a blog, website, affiliate portal, or something that could, eventually, contribute to freeing you from office desk slavery.

With low startup costs, the only thing you have to loose is some time and energy, and the distraction might not be such a bad thing if the economy tumbles further.

Pick your favourite products or services, and contact them about some affiliate deal. Even if they don’t have a system in place yet, they might just say yet, in order to capitalize on the potential skills, energy and intelligence of content producers online.

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WordCamp Toronto’s Hash Tag HilarityOctober 7

Great story about WordCamp Toronto 2008. My cousin and I were sitting in our hotel room, and we couldn’t find any mention of what the WordCamp Toronto hash tag for the event was going to be, and so my cousin, Mark Wood, decided that it should be something like #wcto08. He put out a message on Twitter at 08:13 AM on October 4th, saying “WordCamp Toronto in an hour and a half. Hope to meet some cool people while I am there. #WCTO08″. I then, only a minute later, put out a quick Twitter saying, “WordCamp Toronto hash tag #WCTO08 Deal with it. :)”.

After our messages, people started using the same tag for their Twitters, and other things, until we got to the event, and the organizers let us know that the hash tag should be #wct08. Despite this set back, I continued to push out as many tweets as possible under the one my cousin had created, and when Joseph Thornley took the stage, it only got more complicated as he announced that the hash tag for the event should be #wpto08. We then had three event tags on Twitter, for a single event. It was safe to say that many people were confused, and slightly annoyed.

Questions started circulating if people should just add two or all three tags to their Twitters so that they are easy to find. No one wanted their tweets to be ignored for t

Blog Network Pay Versus Writing Work CompletedOctober 3

One thing not being mentioned in the whole Blog Network pay structures is how much writing the bloggers are doing. I have to wonder at the amount of content bloggers are putting out at $25, $50, and $100 pay levels.

If they are doing one post per week at five hundred words, that would be around one thousand words a month, and at a $25 pay rate, they would be earning $0.025 per word, which isn’t a bad rate in my mind.

However, if they are producing two posts per week, at around five hundred words, and still making the same $25 pay rate, then they would be only earning $0.0125 per word, and that is pretty near slave labour.

Also, say those two posts per week took up an hour of your time, and so you spend four hours a month working for a blog network. Your hourly rate is $6.25 per hour, well below the current minimum wage here in Canada.

Again, doubling the equation will bring you to a saddening $3.13 per hour wage, which to me is closing in on slave wages once again.

How can business online survive and prosper when wages such as these are being handed out? I am not sure what kind of time and how many posts are being generated, but I have to believe that if people took a more rational look at what they are getting paid, that they would either come to the quick realization that opportunities elsewhere are more rewarding for their time, or on

Full Time at b5media: How Much Traffic is Needed?October 3

So, TechCrunch broke the news on the new pay structure for b5media, and normally this wouldn’t be big news, but it gives us a clear picture of what the company will be like to blog for going forward.

For me it comes down to simple metrics. As a blogger, what is my potential “take home” pay when all is said and done?

Taking a quick look at the CPM offerings that b5media is looking to offer, how many page views would you need to generate to be able to make two thousand dollars a month?

You would need 500,000 page views per month to have b5media cut you a cheque for $2000.

While that doesn’t take into account bonuses or any other additions to pay that they come up with, I still think that is a very high level of traffic that very few blogs in their network will be able to get to.

The hardest part of growing a successful blog, and building it into your full time business is getting to the transition point. And the reason that it can be so hard is because your time is split, and blogging usually ends up at the end of the line. You work for a company, you take care of yourself and your family and then you blog for companies like b5media.

Even if you are skipping television, radio, reading and other distracting past-times, you are probably only able to put in around two or three hours of effort each night