Category Archives: Weblogs

Unlimited Ideas

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If you’re a blogger, creating content weekly or even daily can be a challenge. If you’re writing articles for a living, then you’re probably facing similar problems. How do you find topics to write about?

One of my favorite ways is the list post. Everyone has written them. Let’s take a recent one of mine for example.

50 Ways to Improve Your Health

If you’re looking for article topics or more post topics, then try expanding an entry into a post or article. Again, let’s take “meditate” from the article and work on that. Here are some samples to get you started.

  1. Learn to meditate
  2. Types of meditation
  3. Benefits of meditation
  4. Meditation and spirituality
  5. Meditation and relaxation
  6. Advanced meditation techniques

You get the point, I’m sure.

One benefit is that you can do research on one topic, meditation in this case, and then use that research in multiple posts or articles. If you’re only making $10 or $20 per article, then it’s to your advantage to write more articles from the same amount of background research.

If you’re a blogger, then turn the posts into a series on your site.

What, you don’t have any list posts of your own to mine? Use others’ posts for inspiration, but be a good internet citizen and give credit for your inspiration.

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Remember, this is a do-follow blog, so you get link credit for your comments.

I’m always looking to expand my twitter and stumbleupon network. Follow and friend me — I’ll reciprocate.

CornerScribe changing to Dofollow

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Do you know what do-follow means, in terms of your blog and comments you leave elsewhere?

Usually, blogs default to no-follow in their comments. That is, links in comments are not treated as “real” links, meaning you get no credit for them in google. So, commenting isn’t going to do much for your google page rank because you’re not really creating links back to your site.

Except… If the blog you comment on has the comments set to do-follow, then you DO get credit for a link when you comment on the blog.

Wondering where you can comment on such blogs? Frank over at TechJaws has a great article on this topic, A list of Dofollow blogs to Improve Your Pagerank, and a list of PR 4, 5 and 6 blogs that are do-follow.

I had wondered whether changing my own comments to dofollow would have an adverse effect on my google pagerank, but Frank assures me it will not. One word or warning though, you’ll want to run something like Akismet and watch your comments so that spammers don’t take advantage of you. You don’t want to provide links back to disreputable sites.

So, CornerScribe is changing to dofollow, tonight if I can do it easily, so come back and comment often.

Thanks, Frank!

Submissions, please

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I’m looking to fill out my Writing Resources page some more, and I’m looking for some submissions. My goal is to put together a really kick-butt listing of online writing resources, so submit your own best work or others’ work that you find really useful.

Please leave a comment on this post with your link and a brief summary of what it covers. Don’t worry if there’s not already a category covering it; as long as it’s writing, publishing, or blogging related, I’m interested.

And while you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss any updates.

If you prefer, Direct Message me on twitter with your link. Follow me here. If you follow me, I’ll follow you back.

You can always friend me on StumbleUpon as well. I’ll friend you back, and please feel free to use SU to send me links in the future. When friending me, please mention that you found me through this post so I’ll know who you are.

And please spread the word, the more the merrier!

Edited to Add:

I also posted this as a blog carnival. If you came here via the carnival, then feel free to submit your post that way as well. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone sends along.

9 Good Writing Excuses

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writing, novel, freelancing, book, fiction, blog, grammar

Dear Novel,

Yes, I know I have 60,000 words of you written already. I have a scene outline. I even know your ending (and I still respect you). Yet I haven’t sat down with you in days, haven’t added a word to you or done even a little tweak here or there.

Here is what I’ve been doing instead. You can see it’s all really important, so you won’t feel neglected.

  1. I helped my husband find his keys. I can’t have him wandering around tearing up the house looking for them any longer.
  2. I did laundry. Writing naked is overrated. Besides, it’s COLD.
  3. I organized my knitting supplies. Stepping on one of those stitch markers could be painful.
  4. I checked my facebook page. What if a publisher is desperately trying to find me?
  5. Made coffee. That one is obvious.
  6. We helped the guinea pig get un-impacted. You really don’t want to know about that one.
  7. I watched Battlestar Gallactica. (It’s inspiration, okay!)
  8. I cooked dinner
  9. I wrote a blog entry.

O.K. so maybe I’ve been procrastinating just a little bit. I promise to do better.

How are you using Twitter?

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writing, blogging, blog, fiction, novel, book, freelance

Are you on Twitter? You can follow me here. I just crossed the 100 followers threshold, so I’m pretty excited about that.

What is twitter?

Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to post updates in 140 character blips. Think IM plus social networking, and you’ve more or less got it. With twitter, it’s perfectly acceptable to follow complete strangers while that’s frowned on by other sites.

Ideas for using twitter

I use twitter to post updates for some of my blog posts. It’s also a nice way to jump in to interesting conversations that I run across, and that’s more acceptable on twitter since the conversations are public.

One thing that I don’t see talked about as much with twitter is the value of just following. It’s a great way to get ideas about a topic, see what people are talking about, etc. I’ve gotten good results asking for responses on twitter, so it’s another option besides the traditional blog poll.

I can see other potential uses for twitter. I can see it as an interesting medium for poetry or even ultra short stories. I’m hoping that as more people use it and experiment, other interesting uses will come out.

So, how do you get people to follow you on twitter?

First, go to Twitter search and look for people with interests similar to yours and follow some of them. You’ll start getting their updates in your friends list. Chances are, some of them will follow you in return.

Ask for followers on your blog. That seems so obvious, but it’s all to easy to forget to do the simple things. You might want to put a “follow me” button somewhere on your site, but I’ve had good results writing a quick post just asking people to follow. In fact, I just gained about 15 followers in the last week by doing that and asking for followers on a forum I frequent.

Ask for followers on forums you’re a member of. First though, be sure it’s okay to do so and within the community guidelines. Even if it is, be sure it’s acceptable in the culture of the forum you’re on as well. Otherwise, you could end up doing yourself more harm than good.

You’d be surprised, but explaining what you want and just asking works wonders. I wanted to cross the 100 followers threshold, and I did by simply asking.  So, I’m asking again. I’ve got 102 followers right now, and I’m curious how long it might take to reach 200. Care to help me get there?

writing, blogging, blog, fiction, novel, book, freelance

Must Read New Blog

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Genreality is a new blog that I’ve really been enjoying lately because of its great information for new writers.

It’s staffed by midlisters, including Lynn Viehl, author of Paperback Writer, which I’ve mentioned here before. Others are Alison Kent, Joseph Nassise, Carrie Vaughn, Sasha White and Jason Pinter.

They discuss various topics of interest to new writers, particularly those looking to be published. This last week, the theme was “First sale,” and reading how each author landed their first sale was interesting and inspiring.

I think this blog has real potential to provide lots of great information and entertainment. This is definitely one you’ll want to add to your RSS reader!

Being Prepared

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Well, so much for practicing what I preach.

Yes, I was ready for NaNoEdMo. I had blog ideas lined up so posting would be a breeze. I was all set, except for that little flu thing. So, no posts because I didn’t have a stockpile ready.

It just goes to show, it’s one thing to know what’s a good idea, another to do it.

I’m finally getting back to myself, and I’ll be back to a normal posting schedule too. Thanks for bearing with me.

10 Tips for a Craptastic Blog

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Dear blogger,

  1. Put sound on your site. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s noisy. Music and ads work equally well.
  2. Bonus points if it’s exceptionally loud.
  3. Double bonus if it’s also a little racy, the kind of thing I don’t want everyone in my department hearing.
  4. Make your site slooooooooooow to load. If it’s taking less than 30 seconds, add a few more widgets and animations.
  5. Add more animations anyway, you know you want to.
  6. Put what I’m looking for somewhere I’ll never find it. This goes double for Entrecarders. I don’t care if your widget is above the fold, just put it somewhere on the FRONT PAGE for crying out loud!
  7. Write a one line summary and then link to someone else’s REAL article. I bet they love it when you try to make money from their work. I know I love being sent on a wild goose chase for it.
  8. How about some nice pop up ads?
  9. Bonus points if the ad shows a nearly naked woman. Yep, I want someone wandering by and seeing me looking at that.
  10. Choose some funky color combination that will make your blog virtually impossible to read. Even better, make it migraine inducing.

How I doubled my page views in one month

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I’ve been talking about getting more serious about traffic and RSS subscribers as part of this year’s blogging goals. Here’s how I did in January, and more importantly, how I did it.

In December I had only about 4300 page views. Not very spectacular, is it? In January, that was 10,500. I’m very pleased with that.

I also increased my RSS subscribers from low 20′s to about 30. Right now, it’s 31. RSS subscriptions are very tough to get (and keep), so I’m happy with that as well.

How did I do it?

I did a few things differently to promote the site. I’m not sure which had the greatest effect, but overall things are working well.

  • I joined Entrecard. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I was concerned about the quality of traffic. I’m seeing not only more visits, but more subscribers and more commenters. I think it has turned out to be a good choice.
  • I participated in a writing contest at Daily Blog Tips. Writing contests are a great traffic builder, especially when the site is as popular as his.
  • I ran a contest to increase RSS subscribers. Also, I repeatedly reminded people of the contest and asked them to subscribe.
  • I participated in the forums over at Entrecard. Specifically, I participated in stumble exchanges. StumbleUpon is a consistent source of traffic for me anyway, so it makes sense to drive more to the site if possible.

I plan on keeping up the same tactics for this month, minus the contest. I may run some sort of Entrecard contest later this month, but I haven’t decided what it might be.

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m participating in Project Wonderful.  I’m ready to begin buying ads there instead of only selling them, and I’m hoping that will boost my traffic as well. If you’re running ads and have a good deal, leave me a comment. I’m shopping for some ad space.

I don’t expect to see another doubling of page views (though it would be nice!). I do want to see a significant increase, maybe to 15000 or better. If anyone has any tips I that have worked well for you, leave them in the comments.