This Sunday You’re Invited to #Blogchat to Talk Monetizing Blogs

One of my favorite times of the week on Twitter is on Monday mornings, my time (Sunday night for many of you), when Twitter comes alive with #blogchat. #blogchat is a hashtag on Twitter that ties together hundreds of bloggers all talking about a particular aspect of blogging for an hour or so. It starts at 8pm Central US time, and usually revolves around a specific topic and/or guest host. Bloggers exchange ideas, ask questions, and network. It’s a frenzy of activity, which can seem a little overwhelming,...

5 Reasons to Attending Blogging (and Other) Conferences

It’s a known fact that conferences can be expensive. Not only do you have the cost of registration and travel, but also the expense of time away from your work, family and social life at home. If you are traveling to another city for a major multi-day conference you can easily expect to spend several thousand dollars in travel costs and miss at least a week of your normal life. As great of a time as it might be, it can be hard to justify the expense...

How to Set Up Your First Blog the Right Way the First Time

Are you convinced you need to start a blog, but you’re overwhelmed by the setup process? If this describes you and you’d like a little hand-holding in setting up your own blog, I’ve been secretly working with Chris Garrett on a free resource that’s designed just for you. It’s called: Getting Started Blogging It is a six-part course that will walk you through everything you need to know about setting up your blog the right way, the first time. Set...

Are Blog Contests Still Worth Running?

I’m running a month long contest through my blog BenSpark.com. I’ve dubbed the contest SwagsGiving. I have a bunch of products that I’ve gotten over the past year from attending conferences and connecting with companies and brands. Basically I have a ton of stuff that I cannot use. How many Flip Cameras does one person need. I guess I could videotape myself from multiple angles or something at the same time but for the most part this is stuff I do not need. So I want to give it away and I want...

Fanning the Social Media Flame for Viral Exposure

Are you a content marketer? If so, you have a choice to make. You can sit around and wait for your content to go viral. You can hope you’ll get sudden bursts of traffic, hope your readers will spread the word, hope your content will catch fire. Or you can bring your own matches and lighter fluid to set the dang thing aflame yourself. As bloggers and content marketers, which will you choose? Sure, sometimes the passion you have for a subject...

Awesome WordPress Plugins to Empower Your Visitors

This guest post is by Jeff Starr, co-author of the book Digging into WordPress. Helping your visitors get the most out of your site benefits everyone. Visitors get more relevant and useful content, and you enjoy better statistics and more exposure. Unfortunately the game is set up to keep people away from your site. Think about it: Search engines are used to find your content Feed readers are used to read your content Social media is used to share, tag, and organize your content These are major...

“The Rent is Too Damn High!” Guy Sells Out to Penny Auction Site

What a perfect and timely post for this November 2nd Election Day. Everyone should know who “The Rent is Too Damn High” guy is… it’s Jimmy McMillan of course, the candidate running for governor of New York. Put aside any politics and frustrations for the economy, Jimmy McMillan knows how to gain attention and with that attention comes money and power… potentially more than enough money to pay for his rent, which I’m sure is “Too Damn High!”. Let’s...

Related Articles

• How do You “Subscribe” to a Site?
• Why Professional Writers Need a Blog. Or Not.
• You Need to Make Sacrifices to Make it as a Blogger
• “Make Money Online” with the Ultimate Blogging Theme 3.0
• Turning Your Passion into Profit

October Trends + The 10 Horrors of Blogging

For those celebrating Halloween, it’s the spooky season, with haunted houses, terrifying costumes, and creepy decorations around every corner. What better time to look at the horrors that plague bloggers? Gruesome typos and grammatical errors, ghastly headlines, confusing echo chambers, dreadfully empty comments sections, and more! Since it’s the end of the month, it’s also time to unveil October’s most-blogged-about stories, according to Regator.com’s trends. They were, in order: Halloween, Windows...

Review: Successful Blogging in 12 Simple Steps

For the beginning blogger who has limited experience, but lots of enthusiasm, Successful Blogging in 12 Simple Steps makes an ideal primer. Written by Annabel Candy, from Get In the Hot Spot, this twelve-chapter ebook (lucky thirteen, if you count the bonus chapter) touches on all the basics, from choosing a blog topic to using social media to support your blog. I found the structure of the chapters very clear: each chapter starts with a goal —...

The Dark Art of Product Pricing

This post was written by the Web Marketing Ninja — a professional online marketer for a major web brand, who’s sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we! One of the most common questions I get asked is how much I’d charge for a given product. I guess the reason I’m asked this so much is it’s one of the hardest questions to answer, but the importance of price should never be underestimated. Here’s the process I go through when I’m trying to arrive at a product price. 1....