Five Ways to Become a Better Writer and Take Your Blog to the Top

This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures. Does great writing matter in blogging? It’s a debate that isn’t over—yet. But it’s one where more and more blogging experts are emphasizing that your writing does matter, and that readers are drawn in by a strong, engaging voice. Great writing will: encourage people to share your content persuade readers to subscribe for more of the same get a powerful response—like comments or sales make you look like a big player in the blogosphere, even if...

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 —...

What Makes Real Blogging Success?

What makes a successful blog? What makes a successful blogger? I have been reflecting on these questions as I start planning out the next stage of my Authority Blogger course. It’s important to me that people get real results, and honestly the only way I can do that is by basing my advice on what has worked for me and other clients, and my getting people to take action. It Takes a Long Time to Be an Overnight Success Most of the bloggers you know...

5 Mistakes Every Blogger Will Make, Including You

There’s a simple truth to life that every human being will make mistakes. Since every blogger is human, at least the ones that aren’t spambots, then every blogger will screw up inevitably. On BloggingPro, I recently wrote an article about how to recover from the mistakes you make but the question becomes “What kind of mistakes can one expect to make?” With blogging, as with life, there are very few guarantees but there are a few mistakes that...

5 Things Magicians Can Teach You About Blogging

At some level, blogging is really just a stage show. We, as bloggers, are up on a virtual stage giving a performance that goes on for as long as we run our sites. Whether it is a stand-up comedy routine or a serious academic lecture, we’re talking to the world and hope that our audience, no matter how large or small, will listen. On that front magicians are masters of the stage show. Using nothing but a few tricks, which can range from very simple...

How to Re-Ignite Your Blogging Fire When You’re Feeling Burnt Out

A Guest Post by Glen Allsopp from ViperChill. In 2006, at 17, I started a blog about marketing which was very successful from launch. In fact, the first blog post I published was linked to by 4 of the Technorati Top 100 at the time, and I felt like I was on my way to joining the ranks of A-list bloggers. Yet, within a few weeks, I had already ran out of steam. I had plenty of things to write about, and loved the industry I was covering; yet I simply had no motivation to keep going. At the time,...

5 Skills Every Blogger Needs to Excel

On the surface, writing a blog and maintaining it may not seem like that hard of a job. You set up an account, pick a theme, write some posts and hit “publish”. Pretty much anyone can do it so long as they know how to use a computer and understand the basics of the Internet. However, there is a difference between just blogging and blogging well. If you want to do the latter, you’re going to have to learn a few additional skills to help you excel. The...

How to NOT Get Paid to Write Online (And Make Money Doing It)

Fresh out of college, I landed a job writing one-page sell sheets for a marketing company for $50 each. On a rare excellent day, I might do as many as two of these. Soon after, I found a freelance gig that would pay me $300 per article I wrote for an inter-organizational newsletter. I got to interview people for that one. It was more work, but better money. Eventually, I hooked up with a pretty big industry magazine and was being paid $1300 for...