My 6 Favorite Blogging Locations

Where do you blog from?

One of the most attractive parts about blogging as a profession for me is the independence and flexibility that it brings.

I can work from anywhere that I can find an Internet connection. In fact, I don’t even need that at all times—I just need some kind of device to capture the content that I produce (something to type on, a camera, and/or a microphone).

This flexibility, and the opportunity to be location-independent, are wonderful things. They’ve meant I’m able to travel and work from the road; they’ve enabled me to be quite hands-on with my family (particularly useful when your kids are toddlers!), and they’ve also cut down the dreaded commute that I used to have to do when I worked a “real” job.

The other great thing about this type of work—combined with the ever-increasing array of portable computing gadgets that are around—is that from day to day, I’m able to work in all kinds of locations. This variety can be both fun and make life a little more interesting, but it can also help stimulate all kinds of creativity.

Someone asked recently what were my favorite places to blog from. Here’s what I said (and I’d love to hear your favorites below):

1. Cafes

The combination of coffee, a computer, and the white noise of those around me is a very productive mix for me. I spend at least four mornings a week in my local cafe, just a short stroll from our front door. The staff greet me with ‘Blogger dude!” and bring me my drink of choice (a skinny latte with one sugar) without needing to be asked (and a second one 30 minutes later, or on the nod of the head—whichever comes first!). They even installed WiFi just for me.

Other patrons ask how I ever get anything done with all the noise, but for me it’s a strangely productive place where I find myself getting lost in my work. I also enjoy the fact that there are others around—snippets of overheard conversation or interactions with others in the cafe often produce ideas, stimulate blog posts, and even generate product ideas.

2. Shopping centers (the mall)

A variation on the cafe approach has been a semi-regular visit to a local shopping center or mall. The one I go to is among the biggest in Melbourne, and has a great range of cafes, a food court, and several hundred shops—including an Apple store. I enjoy working there partly for similar reasons to those mentioned above (white noise, coffee, etc.), but also because I find the environment quite stimulating for ideas.

I have a little routine that I use: an hour in one cafe; a 15-minute stroll through the shops, where I get all kinds of marketing ideas; an hour in a second cafe; another stroll through shops; then I settle down in the food court or a resautrant for lunch. The combination of all this is surprisingly productive (and I keep the Apple store in business with my regular stop-offs there).

3. The library

I don’t get there as much as I used to since we moved further away from the city, but I always found the big library in the center of Melbourne to be an inspiring place to work, and I used to head there at least once a month. I found just being in a place where others were working and reading used to help me still myself and focus.

Having a vast array of books, magazines, and newspapers on hand for little breaks was also quite stimulating, but the real treat for me is the reading room pictured above, which is just an inspiring place to hang out.

4. Flying

One of the most memorable work sessions that I’ve ever had was on a recent flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles. While I never used to enjoy that flight (14 hours cramped up next to a stranger with not much to do? Not fun!), the last few times I’ve flown, I’ve found myself being particularly productive

Perhaps it’s the altitude or the oxygen they pump around the plane (do they do that?) but I often get a lot done flying. This could also partly be because this is one of the few times in my life that I’m disconnected from the Web (those international flights don’t have WiFi yet). It might also be because I’m traveling to and from conferences that I find to be stimulating experiences.

5. On the couch

Most weeknights you can find me sitting in our lounge room, next to my wife, on the couch, in front of the TV, blogging. I’m not sure how much of the TV I actually watch, but I find the experience to be a good way to wind down at the end of a day.

There are times where my wife needs to tell me to put the computer down so we can connect (although she often sits there surfing too), but all in all it’s usually a reasonably productive time. I tend to use it mainly for admin-type tasks—email, social media, comment moderation, etc.—rather than creative ones, but occasionally I’ll find that something from the TV also stimulates ideas for my work.

6. My desk and office

This is where I do the bulk of my blogging. While I like to get out of the house in the morning to write (mornings are generally more about writing content and creative tasks), I spend the bulk of my afternoons in my home office. This is where I create multi-media content, do interviews, take calls, and do most of the admin and editing tasks that I do.

I did a tour of my office a few years back—not a lot has changed in terms of layout, although I now mainly work from a laptop rather than the desktop computer.

What about you?

Where do you spend most of your time blogging? Which places do you enjoy blogging the most? Do you find different places are better for certain tasks more than others? Interested in your thoughts.

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The Idealist’s Guide to Raking in Tons of Cash

I know what you’re thinking.

You see the title of this post and you see who wrote it and you just might assume that I’m going to ask everyone to join hands and sing Kumbaya. Again.

Maybe you figure that idealism is all well and good for pink-haired bleeding hearts, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

Sure, it’s great to donate and volunteer and do pro bono work … later. Right now, you’re trying to make the cashflow work. Right now, you need to take care of your family. Idealism is going to have to wait until you can afford it.

I totally understand this line of thinking, because I used to think the same way. The only problem is, getting trapped in this mindset will keep you broke.

Because if you think that idealism is something that you choose instead of making money, you’re kind of missing the boat.

How to make more money

Q: How do you increase your business’s bottom line?

A: You get more customers, or you start charging a price that generates more profit.

Q: But how do you do either (or both) of those things?

A: You find a way to help more prospects to become customers, or you do a better job helping your existing customers.

The bigger the problem you can solve or the more people you can solve it for, the more money you stand to make. That’s the fundamental principle behind a good value proposition. Simple, even if it isn’t always easy.

Where we can sometimes go off track

Somewhere along the line, it gets hard. No matter how great your ideas or how mad your skills, you’ll have some tough weeks.

That’s when it can be easy to decide that the whole “being good” thing can wait for a better week to come along.

You know what happens next. Companies start to cut corners, or abuse their employees (who then go on to abuse their customers). What used to be cool and delightful gets a little … less delightful.

Those companies aren’t evil. (Well, most of them aren’t.) They’re just focused — just like you might be.

When you want and need money, you focus on what can make more of it for you. And if you aren’t careful, you can forget that the best way to increase profits is to help more people.

You might start to make decisions based on spreadsheets.

Which is another way to say you start to make decisions based on fear.

You ask, “How can we make these numbers add up in a better way?” And when you do that, the idealistic vision you started with begins to look like a naive dead end.

Let’s talk about a real business

Is it a good financial move to pay four or five times the going rate for African jewelry if you want to resell it in America?

Business 101 says we’ve got to control costs. Helping the vendors or artists you buy from is nice if you’re a billionaire with good hair like Richard Branson. But it looks pretty unrelated to your business’s profitability.

But take a look at what Keza does every single time it works with an artist in, for example, Rwanda. They do, in fact, pay their artists more than the going rate. A lot more. And they make a big profit on every sale.

The artists win. Keza wins. And the win is bigger than that, because Keza’s two missions are to improve Africa’s image in the eyes of the West (eyes that are used to only seeing misery and disease in charity commercials) and to bring the continent some of that “trade, not aid” that Nelson Mandela and Bono keep talking about.

Keza could have leveraged the different costs of living, as many companies do, for easy profit. Paid the street value of pennies and come back home to sell the necklaces for dollars.

From the spreadsheet perspective, that would have made good financial sense. Spend less, make more. Worry about profits now; worry about helping Africa later.

That gets you to being Cost Plus. Which is, I’m sure, a perfectly nice company. But it’s not a remarkable one.

Keza is nothing like Cost Plus.

Keza gets its jewelry into red carpet events, and luxury stores like Barney’s. They’re not chasing the lowest common denominator — they’re finding work that’s exceptional, and delivering it to the wealthiest buyers on the planet.

Keza has a better product, and it tells a better story.

Without Keza’s idealistic mission, its great win-win-win story, and a superior product, could it achieve the high status and esteem required to sell at those high prices?

The perfect balance: Profitable Idealism

If you’ve read any of my posts or taken my courses, you know I’m big on win-win.

I’m not willing to “leverage” when that means that I make a lot and someone else gets a crummy deal. I don’t feel good if my kid is thriving at the expense of someone else’s kid.

In fact, my kind of thinking led a lot of people to tell me I’d never be really successful — that I didn’t have the killer instinct.

No one tells me that any more. (Not, you know, that I’d gloat or anything. Because that would be wrong.)

So ANYWAY, when our own Johnny B. Truant and fellow Copyblogger contributor Pace Smith announced Profitable Idealism, I may or may not have attempted some celebratory cartwheels. It wasn’t very dignified, but fortunately no one was watching except the cat.

What’s Profitable Idealism?

Profitable Idealism is a comprehensive guide to creating a business that makes money (maybe even big money) and makes the world a better place.

I’ve known Johnny and Pace for a couple of years now, and I think they’re the right people to teach this course. They both have highly profitable businesses, and they both have a mission to change the world in their own unique way. (They’ve also brought in a bunch of brainy, wise folks to help teach the course — I know nearly everyone involved, and they’re all amazing.)

Johnny started with the profit side of things and Pace began as an idealist, but they ended up in the same place: with businesses that succeed because they’re focused not just inward, but also outward.

They put Profitable Idealism together because there’s more to creating a profitable idealist business than just slapping a charitable venture on top of your existing business. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll end up with an “idealist” side that drains time and money from your business instead of bolstering it. Or, you’ll end up doing a lot of good, but will find yourself unsatisfied and unable to find the true win-win that allows you to make any money for yourself.

Pace, Johnny, and their six detailed case studies (Jared Angaza from Keza is one of them) can show you how to do it right, so that you end up with an entity that truly helps everyone … including you.

(And if you don’t put yourself into the equation, my friend, that’s not idealism … it’s just being a chump.)

Copyblogger is happy to be a marketing partner for Profitable Idealism and the links on this page are affiliate links. As you’ll find if you spend any time with us, we don’t back anything we don’t believe in — and this course couldn’t possibly fit better with our “Third Tribe” approach.

The course consists of:

• Five live course sessions with Q&A,
• Six case studies of profitable idealist role models that you can steal all kinds of great ideas from,
• Extensive interaction, and …
• … if you beat tomorrow night’s pre-registration deadline — a shot at one of 114 great bonuses.

Pre-registration for Profitable Idealism ends tomorrow, Tuesday 2/22, at 11:59pm Pacific time. After that time, the price of registration goes up by $200 (which is still actually a really good deal), so if you want in, now’s the time!

Check out Profitable Idealism today. Learn how to make more money, and change the world.

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I Do: Tips for Co-blogging with Your Spouse

This guest post is by Mr. Broke Professional: the husband in the husband/wife team behind Brokeprofessionals.com

“I think you need to rewrite that last paragraph,” she said. “And this time, maybe try to be just a little more concise.”

She said it gently. Yet the words stung. She could tell I was a little hurt, so she tried to smooth it over.

“I really like this blog post. I think it is going to be well received by our readers.” I patiently waited for the “but.” And after a moment or two it came.

“But … the only thing is (and please don’t be upset) maybe you should also work a little more on the title before hitting the Publish button.”

This was a new criticism and I did not expect it. Again it hurt. I do not particularly like being edited, by anyone. “Anything else?” I asked with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“Yeah, when you’re done with that can you help me set the table? Dinner is almost ready.”

So goes life when you blog as a husband/wife team.

Note that I’ll use the term “spouse” in this post, but this word is being used to mean any type of relationship.

Advantages of blogging as a husband/wife team

There’s a lot to be said for blogging in partnership with your spouse.

Time

The one resource all bloggers can agree they need more of is time. Unfortunately it’s also the most finite of resources. Partnering up with at least one other co-blogger is great because you can, in theory, accomplish twice the amount of work. For example, while one of you is working on the creative portion of your blog, your co-blogger can work on blog promotion.

When you co-blog with your spouse, as I do, it’s even easier to communicate. You’re probably always together anyway, so even dinner can become an impromptu brainstorming session.

Not feeling guilty about the blogging “time suck”

Another advantage of co-blogging with your spouse is that it’s a great way to spend a lot of time on your blogging hobby without feeling like you are alienating your family. I feared in the beginning that my wife would start to resent my blog, but instead I turned her into a blogging co-conspirator.

Honest feedback and criticism

My wife and I can be (sometimes brutally) honest with our criticisms with one another because we have been together for years. We are in sync and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. I understand that she finds the creative process more engaging than blog promotion, so I try to pull more weight with promotion and online networking.

Much like real life, as bloggers your spouse and you will tend to form a complete unit, whereby you can as a team rise well above the level of skill and/or success that you could ever hope to achieve individually.

Improving your blog’s voice and perspective

Our blog has brought us closer together and we can sometimes incorporate our marital dynamic subtly into our blog. We have blog “debates” or use in-jokes that are, hopefully endearing to our audience and different from what they generally read in most other personal finance blogs.

You can leverage your relationship to maybe create a more unique and valuable experience for your audience.

Motivational benefits

Like an exercise program, a book club, or a diet, it can be very motivational to have a blogging partner—someone who can push you, and keep you inspired and working towards the ultimate goals of your blog. It’s also helpful if that person is someone you do not want to let down.

There are nights when I don’t want to follow our posting schedule, but then I think about how we’re a team. Also, having someone else around to pull half the weight means that I have not yet come close to burnout, despite the fact that we both have demanding day jobs and keep a daily posting schedule.

Challenges of blogging as a husband/wife team

Like any partnership, blogging with your spouse has its challenges.

Creative control issues

You need look no further than examples of various movie star couples that have broken up after working together on a movie project than to know that working with your spouse is not without its potential traps.

For some, the whole purpose of starting a blog may be to escape a job or family, or to simply have something all their own. Once you partner up with a co-blogger, whether the co-blogger is a friend, a stranger, or your spouse, you will no longer possess 100% creative control over the blog.

For example, once I wrote a post that was, in hindsight, really quite weak. It was weak because it was a subject only I really cared about, and it was outside the scope of our niche. My wife pointed this out, and I have to admit I begrudged it for a little bit, even though I knew deep down she was right. The opposite scenario has occurred as well. This creative collaboration can benefit the blog, but it’s still a challenge for the individuals involved.

The stronger personality may take over

This is the Fight Club Rule in effect. Essentially, and as with the rest of your marriage (or in any relationship, really), the stronger party may hijack creative control, and thus alter the intended direction of your blog.

This is not an issue that affects us personally, but we definitely have some friends in couples who could not, in our opinion, function as a 50/50 blogging team. This is particularly devastating if the less visionary or talented partner is the one who is more desirous of control.

Fear of honest criticism

I realize I previously listed open communication and honesty as a likely result of blogging with your spouse, but I can also imagine scenarios where even married couples are too nice to be honest about whether material is right for their blog or not—and the kind of friction that might result.

Jealousy

There have been times when I’ve been jealous of one of my wife’s posts going viral or getting more comments—particularly if my posts have been in a prolonged slump. It is only normal to feel a twinge of envy under such a scenario, and it is one of the possible occupational hazards of working with any partner on a blog.

The blog becomes consuming

I fear I have the blogging addiction much worse than my wife does. I am sure there are times when she wishes we could just relax without worrying about furthering the blog. The solution, of course, is to set some boundaries. That said, if you figure out how to properly establish such boundaries, please let me know, so I can try to establish some as well! My wife would be forever indebted to you, I’m sure.

Are two heads better than one?

The important thing, of course, is to have fun and to allow the co-blogging experience to bring you together as a couple. The major thing to avoid is burnout induced from working together. If you ever need a reminder of what not to do, turn to this post or, if you’re desperate, watch the movie “The Getaway” starring Alec Baldwin and his ex-wife, Kim Basinger.

If you establish the right boundaries and you both find a passion for blogging, then your co-blogging experience can be both beneficial to your readers and to your marriage.

Have you ever co-blogged? What was your experience like? If you haven’t co-blogged with a spouse, would you consider doing so? I look forward to reading your responses.

Join our husband/wife blogging team as we discuss life for the overeducated and underpaid, along with what we have learned about blogging thus far, over at Brokeprofessionals.com.

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Several Reasons To Avoid Writing Free Samples

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like a crow that’s obsessed with picking up anything shiny when it comes to the free samples that people ask us content writers to provide to get the work that pays our bills. It’s hard to discern between the people who will rip you off and take the sample and never return any of your subsequent emails, but I’ve found there are certain criteria that can be helpful when trying to separate the honest clients who just want to get a feel for your writing and the shysters who are out to take you for a ride.

First of all you need to be sure that you’ve got adequate contact information. It used to be an e-mail address was good enough so that you could start a business relationship but now you need to get some further point of contact like a telephone number, a snail mail address or even some kind of social media to look at like a Twitter or a Facebook page. The reasons for needing this much contact information are simple. It’s important that you can rest assured that you are dealing with a reputable company and on the Internet that means you’ll need to have several different points of contact.

Even then you want to be extremely careful when people start asking for free samples of your writing and one of the best ways to get around it is to have a comprehensive list of your past work on a website. Several times I’ve been asked to write samples and pointed perspective clients to my website where I’ve stored information away that highlights my experience and provides URLs and samples to my previous work.

One of the rules that I like to use is the fact that if you’ve been around for a while in the writing game and have a portfolio of your work there’s really no reason to provide anything for free. If you’re a proven writer with a background you should get paid for what you do even if you make a promise to rewrite according to your client’s specifications for free so you can get on the same page.

There are several other things that you want to look out for when you’re writing for a living on the Internet and they include the promises that go along with free samples. Usually I found that companies who promise you a lot of work without being clear about payment methods can be the ones that you need to watch out for in the end. Sometimes the people who promise you the world aren’t necessarily dishonest but they’ve just oversold the amount of work that they think they’ll be able to get.

Finally, I just like to remember that there’s never a contract with any freelance writing that I do on the Internet so there’s never any reason not to pay me for my time and effort because clients can let me go just as quickly as they hire me if they don’t find my writing is up to the standards they set. For me there’s no reason to give out any kind of free samples.

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Protect Yourself from Unwanted Blogging & Web Site Viruses

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Sunbelt Software. All opinions are 100% mine.

How many times has this happened to you? You find yourself browsing through a ton of web sites and then close out your browser to find a ton of popups and various other garbage that has spawned up while you were hitting various different sites. To make things even worse, some web sites will spawn windows that won’t allow you to close your browser without installing some garbage software or spyware.

There’s no doubt about it… new spyware and auto downloads are getting more and more advanced and it’s taking over and destroying everyone’s computers and there is no end in sight. Unfortunately the web sites and blogs that have this garbage coming from their sites usually have little to no content of value, and are just out there to make a quick buck, while the site visitor may end up having to buy a new computer once it’s infected and destroyed.

One solution that many are turning to, is to have anti virus and anti spyware software always running on their computers to block any unwanted garbage from coming through. VIPRE Antivirus software is one company that specializes in this area. Whether you are working from a home pc or need a full business solution, they have a package for you.

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Protect your PC from malware with VIPRE Antivirus.Try our free 30-day trial for lean and mean security that delivers antivirus and antispyware protection.

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VIPRE wanted to give away a year of full access to their anti virus software with the users of BloggingTips.com. Though I only have one license code to give away, I thought it would be good to give it out to someone that really wants the software package, valued at $29.95. If you would like the full license code for Vipe antivirus, simply download a 30 days trial of their software and answer the question below in the comments section. The first person with the correct answer will receive the license code:

What award did GFI Vipre Antivius win for their 100% Virus Detection software? (Leave answer in comments section)

If you are not protected with your own antivirus software, I highly recommend that you download a free 30 day trial of Vipre. The cost of not protecting yourself could be detrimental and you could potentially lose everything on your computer.

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Come with Me to Tanzania

Blogging has been very good to me.

Over almost nine years, it’s been a daily blessing in more ways that I can count:

• new friends
• new skills
• new knowledge
• the opportunity to travel
• the ability to pay off a mortgage
• business partnerships
• the chance to do what I love (communicate and build communities) all day, every day—and get paid for it!

Blogging has been very good to me.

Can blogging be used to help others?

However I’ve always wanted blogging to be more than just good to me. I want it to benefit others, too.

The most obvious people I want it to benefit are those who read the blogs I publish. This is why pretty much everything I do has a “how to” or “advice” spin on it.

One of the most exciting things that happens to me each day is being thanked for achieving that goal—helping people improve in some area of their life.

However, I’ve always wanted blogging to be even more than that. Over the last few years, I’ve often found myself wondering how it could be used to make the world a better place in some bigger way.

With the opportunity to communicate to over 4 million people a month, surely I can find a way to do that.

The Tanzanian experiment

Next Thursday I’m going to experiment with doing just that—and I’d love you to join me.

On 25 February, I’m jumping on a plane (well, a series of them) for Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, East Africa.

I’ll be in the country for one week, to spend time observing—and reporting back to my social network on—an amazing project called Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT). It’s a project of CBM, an international disability and development organization.

The trip is being organized by CBM Australia (you can read more about it here) with the goal of raising awareness of the issues that are faced every day by people with disabilities in developing countries.

The work that they do is amazing.

Last year alone, they performed over 10,530 surgeries and helped improve the lives of around 120,000 people with disabilities and their carers.

Their work focuses upon many areas, including working with sight-related disabilities, club foot, cleft lip/palate, and maternal health (among others).

Having spent time visiting a number of other projects in developing countries over the years, I know that this trip will be confronting. But I’m excited by the opportunity at hand to both be personally impacted by what I see, and to share the journey with you.

Throughout the week in Tanzania, I’ll be sharing what I see via blog posts, videos, and Tweets. We’ll be focusing mainly upon some the hospital’s work with maternal health issues (mainly fistula) and tracking some of the stories of the people that we meet.

This trip is not a money grab. The intent isn’t to create daily calls for you to donate. I’m sure CBM wouldn’t say no to donations (in fact, they’d go a long way to change lives), but my intent with this trip is to share stories, highlight needs, and show what an amazing organization and its people are doing to meet the needs around them.

My hope is that we’ll all come away from the experience with a better awareness of the issues, and the motivation to do something to make the world a better place (whether that be by supporting the work of CBM, or supporting another need you know of).

How can you join this trip?

The bulk of the blogging that I’ll be doing while away will be on CBM’s blog (there isn’t much there yet, but we’ll be adding to it and redoing to the template significantly in the coming days). I’ll be adding posts, videos, and images during the week that I’m on the ground, and in the weeks that follow.

I’ll probably do an update or two here on ProBlogger also, but I’m aware that this blog is about blogging and not Tanzania or issues facing Developing Countries, so we’ll keep it largely on CBM’s blog.

If you’d like to get those updates please subscribe to their blog here.

You can also follow the journey on Twitter by following CBM’s Twitter account. I’ll be making updates on that and also, from time to time, on the ProBlogger Twitter account.

Lastly – you can support this project by sharing news of it and the content we produce while in Tanzania. Please consider passing on the links to stories we share and helping word spread further about what we’re up to. Thanks!

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How to Get Your Black Belt in Blogging

Let me tell you a little secret about blogging: It’s very formulaic.

It’s more craft than art.

If you can internalize what’s required to write a solid blog post, you’ll beat out the competition in the same way someone with a black belt will usually win a fight against someone who hasn’t trained and internalized fighting principles.

While getting a black belt in blogging doesn’t guarantee you’ll become huge, it does significantly increase your chances.

Let’s examine some of the fundamentals you’ll need to master to receive your black belt in the craft of blogging.

1. Use Metaphors and Similes

Using metaphors and similes will increase the quality of your posts in two ways.

• It helps your audience to easily understand a concept since you’ll be comparing the new concept with a concept they’re already familiar with.
• It paints a picture in the minds of your readers which will engage and please them.

A metaphor I recently used was comparing water to focus. I explained to my audience that focusing on the negative is like randomly pouring water out of your canteen when you’re lost in a jungle and really need that water for survival.

Do you see how the above metaphor not only paints a picture that makes reading more enjoyable, but also instills the lesson with much greater impact than mere plain language does?

2. Be Succinct

Saying everything you want to say in fewer words requires more time than conveying the same message to your audience without concern of how many words you use.

It may seem odd that a shorter post often takes longer to write than a longer one, but it’s not.

When you strive to limit your word count without compromising your message, you have to be methodical in how you express your message. Conversely, when you’re indifferent about word count, you don’t need to make as much an effort in how you convey your message.

Just as a good martial artist strives to make every movement as efficient as possible with no wasted energy, likewise, you should make every post you write as short as possible without your message being compromised.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter. ~Blaise Pascal (1623-1662).

Your readership will love you for being concise.

3. Be Entertaining

As Jon Morrow of Copyblogger has mentioned before, if all people wanted was information they’d buy a textbook.

One primary reason people read blogs is because they’re looking for a diversion from the mundaneness of life.

If you want to compete with the competition, discover and practice as many ways as possible to make your blog entertaining.

Here are some ways to do that:

• Use metaphors and similes.
• Share interesting experiences and how they relate to your message.
• Use quotes from books, music bands, movies and TV shows to help illustrate your points.
• Be hilarious.
• Be controversial.

4. Be Diligent

Unlike a black belt in the martial arts, once you get your black belt in blogging, it can be taken away from you within a moment’s notice.

In martial arts, once you get your black belt, you don’t necessarily have to spar with anyone from that day forward and you’ll always remain a black belt.

Not so with blogging.

You see, we’re fighting every day. Every day we’re fighting for people’s attention and trying to convince them that we’re worth staying subscribed to and that the competition can’t offer what we do.

There’s really only two ways to keep your black belt and it requires tremendous discipline.

1. Read like your life depends on it

I currently read an hour and a half a day and consider my reading more important than content creation for the simple reason that you can create all day long, but if it doesn’t shine, what good is it?

Reading diligently, blogs and books, will ensure that ideas are constantly coming to you and that they’re the kind of ideas that will keep your readers craving more of what you have to offer.

When I fall short in my reading regiment, fewer ideas come to me and the quality of ideas diminish.

2. Write like your life depends on it

While I definitely think reading is even more important than writing, writing’s a close second.

For starters, if you’re not updating your blog on a regular basis you can hardly be considered a blogging black belt no matter how much talent you have.

Writing is also the best way for you to practice all the techniques you’ve learned. Even in martial arts, any serious black belt never becomes complacent once they get to this exalted level. They just want to keep getting better.

What else do you need to receive your black belt in blogging?

About the Author: Tick Tock Timer is an online timer that helps anyone serious about getting things done be more productive, created by Bamboo Forest.

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