BluePop13

This is a Pop Post by Ben Lumley from 6Aliens.com. He’s a great writer and a very cool person to talk to. Check out his blog and get to know him, you won’t regret it. Over to you, Ben.

I’m Ben Lumley, a blogger from the UK who writes about self development at 6aliens.com. Why not connect with me on Twitter @benlumley6 or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to my RSS Feed?

We can all have our say now and reach a massive audience. 20 years ago, if you wanted to have your say and have everyone listen, you needed to be on radio, TV or on a massive billboard somewhere in the middle of town. Even then, you only had the potential to reach a particular geographic group of people, unless you moved on to better things.

Now if you write a blog post, it has the potential (without the need to take it to any other forum) to reach millions of people from all over the planet. That’s a massive thing if you think about it for a minute. Everything you write, or take pictures of, or video has to ability to hit a huge audience.

But there’s a funny thing about potential. It’s pretty useless unless you do anything about it. It’s like having a million dollars (something we can all relate to) and letting it sit in a box under the floorboards. It has the potential to change the lives of millions of people in either a positive or negative way but is useless unless you take some massive action with it.

Think of your blog as that million dollars.

Nurtured in the right way, it can positively affect the lives of people from all walks of life or it can lay dusty on the shelf.

How to make or break your blog.

Content

Make: With great content you can achieve anything. What was it the man said? “Give me a lever long enough and I can move the Earth.” You need to create stuff that you’re truly passionate about. It might be hard to come up with, it might take a while to put together, but by the end of it you should be so excited to publish it that you’re fit to burst.

Break: If you’re sitting down thinking, “I don’t want to write this” then don’t. You’ll end up creating something that makes people think “I don’t want to read this.” If you write in one continuous paragraph you’ll lose people’s attention. Focus on giving your readers a great article that they just can’t put down.

Comments

Make: Getting comments on your blog to start with is hard work. You can’t get your message heard if you’re standing on an island. Get out there and talk to other people. Commenting on other blogs has exploded my traffic. It’ll do the same for you.

Break: Make sure you always add value – just saying “great post, Dude” won’t get you anywhere. Just shouting your message on every comment page on every blog you find is just selfish and won’t make people want to come and visit your blog. Oh, and whatever you do, have the courtesy to reply to people who leave comments on your post. They’ve taken time out of their day to leave you a message, the least you can do is thank them (sorry rant over).

Promote

Make: Having a great post is one thing; telling people about it is another. Ever wonder how many people pay attention to cards you see up in shop windows saying that they have something to sell? Realistically, probably not many. What if your card was an advert but it was the one that came on TV just before your favourite programme, just after you sat down to watch it? You’d notice it then wouldn’t you? My friend James has this down. Write and promote, write and promote.

Break: The biggest things that will break your success with regards to promoting your posts are the fact you either don’t promote them (let’s just keep that box with a million dollars in it under the floorboards shall we) or that you promote it badly. Keep it simple. Don’t demand that people come to read your posts. Give people the choice and you’ll find that as your blog grows more people will choose to come and read or watch.

The making and breaking of your blog really comes down to one simple question… what are you going to do with your million dollars?

I have to admit that I’m currently in the middle of another article as I’m writing this one and the idea for this post just popped out to me so I thought I’d do something with it.

Whether you blog about a hobby for fun or you’re trying to make money with your blog are you allowing your reader to understand that you’re real just like they are? Or are you sending the message that you’re nothing more than a robot inside your own blog that just wants their money or to steal traffic for no good reason.

I hope you’re real because that’s what it takes to make it no matter what niche you’re in. Connecting with your readers is so important and doing it in such a way that makes them feel like they’re wanted and like they’re number one is critical for your success. Help them. Solve their problems. Ask them questions. We’ve all heard that before and again. Along with this we’ve also heard add your personality to your blog which is a good idea too!

Just how real can you get though? Video blogging? Audio? Why not? These are both good ways of letting your readers know that you actually exist. If you want to build their trust why wouldn’t you consider at least giving these a shot once in a while if not on a regular basis.

Here I’m going to write about what I think will come about depending on which you decide to present yourself as and you decide which sounds better to growing your blog into a lasting career earning maybe even money.

Robot:

You talk at your readers or talk to yourself and there’s no knowledge of a real person behind the words. You don’t care because you don’t market yourself anyway and if you do for some reason you’re not doing a very good job because you’re not attracting repeating visitors, instead just visitors that may come back once and then they’ll never see a single blog post of yours again. You never ask questions and you never have anything truly important to say that could actually benefit anyone.

When people look at your blog they see spam and never return so you might as well keep this as an on line journal just for yourself and never worry about doing anything with it because you’re pretty much dead at this point.

Real:

You discuss real world problems with your readers that are important to them. You also do this in such a way that involves them completely in the conversation so as to allow them to respond with comments that help your blog out as well as any other comments on your blog also. You solve their problems and let them know you’re there for them day or night. You comment on their blogs and you market yourself to the point they know you’re a real person and you make your blog fun and enjoyable experience to revisit daily and maybe even a few times a day.

Your blog truly kicks ass and you make it work for each individual who visits and new comers as well.

Great job, you’re really making things real out there!

Is your blog alive or is your blog battery operated?

This is probably a title that attracted some attention and it should. Believe it or not this post isn’t actually about making any kind of money with your blog or even NOT making money with your blog. It’s well worth the read so read on.

Penny

I don’t know about you but I see pennies every day of my life on the road and even in my couch. They’re everywhere and they’re all the same. Same color and same size and they’re all worth the same too. But, they all add up very quickly and before you know it you have a small bit of cash in your hand. Of course pennies don’t add up very large amounts of money but they’re still worth something and money is money after all. Bottom line, they’re small and worth the least but they’re every where and easy to find.

Nickel

No harder to spot than your penny but the nickel is worth 5 cents and adds up much quicker because of this. You can probably find these in all the same places and they’re all the same color as well. Nothing more to these except they add up much quicker.

Dime

Not much more to add here. The dime is worth 5 more cents than nickel is and can be found in all the same places as well. Just more money.

Quarter

This guy is worth quite a bit more than even the dime and is a bit harder to find. You can still pick these up pretty easily but even so, you won’t find these every where. A cool thing about the quarter is that these are popular for more use like washing machines and candy machines in the mall and such too!

Ah… The Dollar

I’m talking about a paper dollar here, not the coin. The coin is even more rare as far as I know so we’ll stick with the paper dollar and that’s exactly why. You can find a dollar laying on the street or something as well but finding a dollar just lying around isn’t likely to happen so much as other money as mentioned before here. The dollar adds up a lot faster than all of these combined because it’s worth much more.

What does all of this have to do with your blog?

You decide.

What do you want to get out of your blog or better yet, what do you want your reader to get out of your blog? Do you want to be everywhere and easy to find like the penny or much harder to find but worth a lot more like the dollar?

Personally I would like to know that I’m both. In fact, better yet I would really like to know that I’m just a little bit of all of the coins put together.

I want to be easily found like the penny which can be picked up pretty much anywhere and is worth something the more places you find one as they add up quickly.

I want to be in the same position as the nickel as it’s worth a bit more than the penny and still very easily found.

I want to be like the dime where I can just as easily be found once again and add up even faster yet.

I also would love to be like the quarter and add up even quicker and be discovered even more places as well as valuable to even more of a variety of different people with different needs.

And I would absolutely and completely love to be like the dollar bill which kicks all their asses in value and is just a bit harder to be found but still hold a place around the web when all the change is added up over time.

You can find any of these coins pretty much anywhere, literally. They all have their own value to you and they all add up quicker than one another. The dollar is much more valuable and is a bit harder to find, however.

Strive to be in each group and remain focused on your objective to the people who give you that value each day. They determine what you’re worth and how easy you are to be found. Give them value and work your ass off and soon, possibly, hopefully, just maybe your blog will go from the value of a penny into a nickel and all the way clear up to the dollar bill and more!

What do you think you would like to be?

Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter or Dollar Bill? Or all added up over time?

You probably visit blogs on a daily basis that you’re aware of and maybe you also visit a few new ones here and there or every day you get online.

When you read them do you read the article and then just leave a useful comment based on what the article was about and add your own two cents? If so, here’s something a little different that you might consider doing that just might put a spin on things in the future.

Next time you’re about to read an article that has a title that just grabs you and won’t let go, scroll down and read all the comments first.

1^st.

Scroll down and see how many comments there currently are. Maybe it was just posted today and hasn’t received many yet. Maybe it was posted today and has 10, 20, 50, or 100. If it has more than 15 I wouldn’t recommend reading every single comment… Just enough to get a feel for what the article was about.

2^nd.

Why do this? Because it’s fun and you’ll get to read the entire article without actually reading any of it. You’ll also get to concentrate on what other people have to say and how accurate they truly are after reading the article yourself. AND, you’ll be introduced to NEW bloggers with different writing styles before reading the current stuff you’re used to. Kind of like getting out of your comfort zone just a bit, kinda.

3^rd.

Why not? As stated above it’s fun. However, after reading all the comments first you should actually read the article and leave your own comments. Maybe even comment on someone elses’s as well. And maybe, just maybe you could even mention (if you did do this) that you got the idea from this article (giving me some love ) and mention why you did it (you can come up with your own reasons) and what you actually got out of it.

One last thing to note is why this is actually a useful technique that just might help you greatly in the future: By reading comments (if there are any by the time you visit the page) of other bloggers you will get an idea of how much they really are contributing to the article and conversation. If they have some good points to make, they might be worth checking out. If not, well, it’s really up to you. This is just a small idea that might help you BIG time in the long run for who to actually form a relationship with and who to visit next!

Have fun!

Read blogs any way you feel like reading them but remember there’s always something new happening in the world and especially on the Internet and by tomorrow things will have changed just slightly.

How do YOU read blogs? I’d love to hear what you think about this idea… I truly would so please share your comments below.

Thanks!

I’ve only mentioned this a few times over a number of blogs I’ve commented on – some of which I’ve not visited since and have forgotten. My apologies for that. Some of you have asked me for more information about Social Media Training Lab and I gladly shared with you a bit of my experience with them.

I also said that I would be glad to share some more of my thoughts as time went on and after they had finished building my new blog for me. They finished, they emailed me the information as they say they would and everything looked good. So without rambling on here I will let you know exactly what I think of them and what came about from their services.

Who’s Social Media Training Lab?

SocialMediaTrainingLab.com is a place where you can go to have your very own blog set up for you with no technical experience or knowledge needed. They put everything together for you and set up some pretty awesome things so that you can get things going NOW!

When you do things with them you pay just a penny for hosting through their link with HostGator.com and it pays for the first month, after that you pay the regular hosting costs for the plan you’re on. Of course you can always change your plan later on. If you already have a domain purchased then you pay nothing more. If you need to purchase your domain then you purchase it at whatever price it’s offered through GoDaddy.com. You’ll discover all this if you decide to check them out for yourself after all.

My Personal Experience

I really don’t have much to say about them except that it actually took longer to get things all set up than they said it would. I feel the reason for this is because it was literally right around Christmas Day which is why I’m not that upset about it. I like what they’ve done and still haven’t ventured all through my new blog yet to discover all of what they put up but so far it looks pretty darn good.

Goals4Individuals: My brand new blog Goals4Individuals.com is up and running and has been. I decided to wait until February to really say anything about it because I didn’t want to just jump right into a new blog. I’m still working with ideas for what I’m going to do with it but I’m making no promises at this point.

I’m not going to explain much of what the blog/site is about because you can easily visit it and learn about it from the About page. I will say that it’s my intention to help anyone who’s struggling with their life to find a way to get through something and see a better picture of where they would like to be. That’s really my main goal with the site is to help others with different areas of goals and ideas they have. I want to embrace what can, should, and will be in life with individuals who are ready to take on something extraordinary to the next level. If you’re ready and if you’re with me then head on over to Goals4Individuals.com.

Have Questions?

I’m sure you have many questions for me that I still have not had a chance to answer yet and I would love to do so. Comment below and talk to me. I’m here and I’ll answer anything I possibly can. Just please make sure you read the entire post before asking me something I have already mentioned above or at least visit Goals4Individuals.com before asking me what the purpose of the site is about. It’s all on there. In fact, I haven’t added a post to it since it went up. There are posts on there and they have my name on them and there’s a video I have yet to edit and take down but the site is up and I have added some information to the About page.

So… What do you think?

My girlfriend and I both have been customers of Verizon Wireless here in Iowa where we live and we both like the service quite a lot. She had a prepaid phone when we first started dating a few years ago and her family had Verizon. I came from US Cellular which I still miss a bit but over all Verizon isn’t too bad.

A few weeks ago my girlfriend’s cell phone broke in half after flipping it open. This was a manufacturers defect but because of how long she’d had the phone they wouldn’t do anything about fixing it. I not only went to a service center but also called the company several times and explained the situation in hope that there was something they could do to take care of this for us. Nothing.

They recommended we just buy a new phone but we have no money for that. They said we could file some kind of thing with insurance but we’re already paying six dollars a month, per phone, for insurance – and we have to pay around forty dollars to have this fixed?! Hell no!

Take Action

I called and called and called the company until I finally got someone who would listen to our situation and actually wanted to help us out with our problem. She said there were phones that have discounts and because my line had an annual upgrade they could send us a free phone to replace the one that broke. Then when her line is ready for an upgrade I could get a new phone if I wanted to.

Great! Finally someone who actually gives a damn about their customers. Personally I have not had the best luck with Verizon Wireless but there are a few times when they DO do something worth your while. Am I complaining about the company? Not necessarily. Every company has its policies but when it conflicts with the customer’s best interest I have a hard time liking that.

I do admit that I haven’t had much trouble with Verizon since getting the phone I currently have (the same phone that broke for my girlfriend – the one I’m linking to is actually the newer model from the one I still have) which is the LG VX8360 and had nothing BUT trouble with the Razr phone. I just don’t recommend the Razr but now our roommate has it and is doing just fine.

Conclusion

This isn’t a very long update but after speaking with the customer representative over the phone and her helping me like she did I gave her my blog address and said I would post an update before the end of January about the great service they’d done for my girlfriend and myself.

We haven’t got the new phone yet but it should be here by morning. Let’s hope so!

What do you expect and look forward to when purchasing a new cell phone or just buying something at a store and they say they can’t do something because it’s policy even though you know you’re not the only customer who’s suffering because of their “policy”?

I’ll first mention that I got this idea from Gabe’s latest post (as of this writing) and number 20 gave me a great idea for this post.

I want to know what your top 10 favorite blogs to visit are. This can be anything, seriously. Doesn’t have to be about Social Media, Blogging, Computer, Technology. It can be about fishing, biking, religion, anything. I hope you get the point. If you like it, share it. I’ll just leave it at that.

At the end of each month I’m going to be sharing my top 10 favorite blogs I visit most on a daily basis and the reason why. What have those blogs done for you? How have they added value to your life? This isn’t hard in fact this is a pretty fun experience as everyone will get to be a star here.

Send by the 25^th of each month what your top 10 favorite blogs are and why you chose each one of those. I’ll post who you are as well as your blog and your top 10 favorite blogs and the reasons why you like them. This way, we will have one very long article of people (hopefully) who all share different blogs they enjoy reading.

Why You Should Participate

Your blog gets noticed more. The blogs you mention get noticed more. Everyone shares what they think of what blogs each person liked and why.

This could be huge so if you want in just send me your list by the 25^th of each month.

See, as Gabe said, you can ALWAYS find something to talk about.

So… What do you think? Are you in?

I used to wonder all day what I was going to write about next. I would worry quite a lot too because I set a deadline for myself and if I came close to not meeting it I would completely be closed up and I couldn’t think of anything to write.

That’s all changed. For me at least but maybe this will work for you too!

I hope.

Buy your domain and hosting and install your favorite platform, I recommend WordPress. Start a welcome article describing what your blog is going to be about. Now, go out and comment on blogs you like from any category. Do this for hours. Heck if you can get 100 in on a Saturday with some pop or coffee or something, do it!

Keep doing this daily (just not as many, obviously) and as you read what other bloggers are talking about hopefully some ideas will come to you about what you could write about. Open up your favorite word processing application and start writing. Focus on two articles at the most. Publish those articles for a future date and whenever an idea strikes you simply repeat the process.

This is what I do and it comes in handy. At the least I hope I’m truly providing quality content with every article I write as without giving you anything there’d be no need for me to blog except to talk to myself by reading what I wrote and commenting on my own words.

So, in a nutshell, buy everything you need to get started (domain, hosting, wordpress (this is free)), write your first article and go read other articles and comment like crazy. If ideas come to you don’t wait, write them down. Start making articles that are worth something to someone else. You’ll know if they are once you start publishing them and continue commenting everywhere you possibly can because if you’re receiving comments back, that’s good!

Now go do this and see if it works in your case!

How do you blog with ease? What inspires you and where do the ideas you blog about come from?

Everyone has their own reasons for blogging. Some do it for fun while others do it to make a living (still having fun, hopefully). You can come up with your own reasons I’m sure. But why is blogging truly important to each one of us?

Only you can answer that question and here are some of my reasons why blogging is important to me.

• Basics

Blogs are like personal online journals where we share how we feel and what we did today, yesterday or what we’re going to do tomorrow. They help keep others informed of hobbies we might have and are useful for sharing tips and ideas to people who are interested in similar topics.

Blogs allows you to quickly and easily find what you’re looking for by date, category, title, and more. And blogs are updated a lot more often than the typical website. If you have a website, great! If you have a blog, even better!

What if you just want to post information and update it once in a while? A blog really isn’t required for this kind of website and it’s fine not to have a blog. However, the beauty of a very well known patform called WordPress allows you to have an entire website with one page as a blog. How cool is that?!

I could surely add more here. I’m positive you can add your own thoughts and ideas as well. But the basics are just that, basics. Blogs are personal frequently updated pages where useful and quick information can be found on any topic out there.

• Intermediate

If you’ve gotten past the basics and want to build a readership and a relationship of some sort then you’re going to need ways of doing just that. WordPress and I’m sure other platforms allow you to add personal widgets and plugins that make it stupid simple to interact easily with your readers and allow them to share what they find useful with more people across the internet. Have an idea about building computers that someone just posted on a blog and you just saw someone ask if anyone knew anything about the topic, simply retweet it and hopefully your friend will see it and click the link.

Going on a trip for a few days and won’t be anywhere near a computer? You can easily setup WordPress to schedule a post date and time for articles you’ve written a week ago to post while you’re away. I just had to add this in here because it’s what I am using right now. I’m actually writing this on Tuesday January 12 at 2:01 PM right now. It’s not going to be posted for over a week. I like how that works because it allows me to keep up with things and not be in such a hurry in case I’ve got nothing on my mind to blog about. You might feel different about it and that’s fine.

• Advanced

Ah, the advanced stage of blogging. Where Basic meets Intermediate and adds a touch of style to things. Here is where the real fun is of course everyone, as always, has their own take on this. At this point you should be looking at a decent design for your blog and should have some good content already in place. Ask around and discover what real people really want to know more about. Give it to them and let them know what you have and where they can find it. You have plugins to work with and you have WordPress to make it incredibly easy to do all this with. Pick a good premium theme or even better, Thesis theme your own stuff and make it yours.

There’s not much to this level. In fact, this is all I have to say about it because the basics are always fun because you’re testing the water and have so much to learn. Intermediate is just the next step to things and this level just combines the two.

Bottom line is this. Create a blog with purpose. Something you love and find others who share that love for that idea. Write what you know and send them over to check out what you said and ask them what they think. Then interact. Create something that looks nice, functions well, is useful and interesting to read and and gives them options to work with. From here just keep learning and keep doing.

Here are some interesting blogs I’ve come across that I visit daily and they’ve opened my mind to new things and I believe you should check them out.

The InfoPreneur – A blog from a guy by the name of James who kicks ass every day and is fun to talk to and works hard to help other people and share what he learns. He even linked to this blog; how nice is that!

WakeUpCloud – I’m not even sure where to start. Henri is full of passion and loves to help people find theirs. He explains things in such a way that reading what he says makes you stop and think and wonder if what you’re doing is what you SHOULD be doing in your life. Of course, he’s not about controlling your life, he’s about showing you ways to help improve your life and reach your dreams.

BeginnerBlogger – Sarge is working hard to help people become better bloggers at the beginning stages. He strives to show people how and why they can and should blog. You should check this one out as well.

SiteSketch101 – Nicholas created SiteSketch101 to teach people how to blog and do it creatively and add personal style to their masterpiece. He has a very unique name (kinda like BluePop13 lol) and is now doing some videos blogs as well.

FreeBlogHelp – Gabe shows you some very creative ways to improve your blog and how you can reach out to others faster using The Value-Driven Commenting System. He always has something fun and interesting to check out.

EscapingThe9to5 – Maren Kate talks about how she escaped the 9to5 routine and is now becoming successful as a blogger, entrepreneur and writer and her blog will show you how you can do just the same thing. Follow her and see what she has to say.

These are just naming a few of the blogs I check out on a daily basis and a little about what value they add to my life.

As you can see every one of these blogs has to do with similar ideas about blogging and quitting your day job and how to live a better life. They are all great blogs and if you work at it you can join the community and create something of value as well.

Why is blogging important to you and what blogs do you visit that improve your life? How do they improve your life?

Leave your comments; I always love reading them!

I’ve been successful in my first Guest Posts and would like to give out a huge thanks two both Sarge from BeginnerBlogger.com and James at TheInfoPreneur.net because they were kind enough to publish my work which means my articles were to their standards.

I want to give you the same opportunity I’ve had the last couple days. If you want to write an article for BluePop13.com just write your article and make sure it follows the guidelines below and send it to me.

What I’m looking for

• A quick and simple bio with links back to your site as well as your e-mail (make sure your e-mail is in HTML format).
  

• Please write an article relating to blogging, social media, computers, technology, entertainment, linux, money, life and self development, and helping people solve problems with how to’s.

• Any article on the above topics will do just fine as long as it’s well written and is fun to read and useful to other people in some way.

• To submit your article just send me your email address your article and your bio (if e-mailed remember to have it in HTML format if possible). Will have Pop Posts page up shortly.
  

• My post days as of right now are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I will post your article on one of those days as soon as I review it and it has been approved.

• I will email you to let you know if I’ve approved it and what day it will be posted. As soon as it’s up I’ll send you a direct link to the article.
  

Remember just e-mail me your bio and article in HTML format. My Pop Posts page will be up shortly as stated above.