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Popping Out Of The Blue With A Different Approach To Blogging

Archive for the ‘Effective Blogging’ Category

If Content Is The Car Then Passion Is The Pedal

I was just over at Site Sketch 101 reading about how to blog as a newbie which is a guest post from Jen Smith about some things that are important when writing and maintaining a good blog. She hit a lot of good key points and something came to mind while reading what she had to write: passion. Do you have it and how do you know if you do?

Love To Write

I write about what’s going on in my life or at least that’s what I started writing when I first started my blog. I won’t go into detail there… Some of it wasn’t pretty and I’d rather not remember or go back to those times… Extremely hurtful.

I like to write though. I like writing about what I learn and sharing it with other people who are also interested in what I write about. I don’t have a niche and that’s fine with me. I talk about blogging and success and whatever is on my mind at the time. I do know the importance of finding a niche and talking about that in order to really create something great with my blog. Bottom line though, I love to write in general and it’s what keeps me going.

Content Flows In Like Waves

I do have writer’s blog sometimes but life experiences and just feeling calm once in a while and taking things slowly helps content flow in easily. Sometimes I even have so much info flowing into my brain that I feel like I couldn’t type it fast enough let alone write it on paper. Who can honestly type slower than writing things down anyway?

When content keeps flowing in and one of those days just happens to be great where you can think of a bazillion things to write about, figure something out and get those ideas out some how. They’ll help for later on.

There’s Never Enough Time

Even with great ideas coming in sometimes it doesn’t feel like there’s enough time in the day to get all those out and some ideas are then lost. They may return but you won’t know unless you had some way to remember what that idea was that you previously lost. Use your time wisely and try to get everything you can down if it’s important enough. There’s no time like the now.

Money… What’s That?

When you’re passionate about it you just won’t care if you make money or not. Sure it’d be nice to make money with what you love writing and doing but you won’t get burned out and get frustrated as much (or at all) if you truly love what you’re talking about or doing. Money will come when things are ready and for now you just love to write.

Butterflies And Maybe A Dollar

When you write, sometimes you may get butterflies because of how great something you wrote turned out. It’s a wonderful feeling I think every blogger has at some point or another. It’s enough to make you want to make money because you feel you could easily do it for the rest of your life but if you never make money you just don’t mind either.

Forever…?

Things change and you may not be a blogger for the rest of your life. You may never live off your blog or you may be able to by tomorrow, depending on how far along your blog is. Either way, are you crazy enough about your content to do what you’re doing for as long as you can dream and imagine doing this?

What are you passionate about that you could just do and keep learning more about in order to get out there and share your love for your topic with the world?

Build Your Blog With Fire In Mind

Today I was at a friend’s house and we were in the back behind his garage building a small fire on some wood he had chopped up. It was safe and it was also a fun time as we don’t see each other too often any more. Building that small fire reminded me of building up a blog.

Here’s how:

Think Big

We just wanted a small fire so ‘think big’ isn’t relevant in this case. However, we still wanted a fire and wanted to keep warm so we didn’t just want to barely see the damn thing… We wanted something pretty good. This led us to what kind of material we needed to get the end results we were looking for.

With your blog you need to be doing the same thing. How big do you want to go? What do you want to be able to do with your blog and more importantly what do you want your blog to be able to do for you? You’ve got to come up with something. I’m not going to lie, I’m not too great at this part myself. It’s hard for me to think of bigger and better in a lot of situations for some reason. Do I give up though? Hell no!

Gather The Right Material

After figuring out what kind of fire we wanted to build we needed to gather the right material for the job to get done correctly. I started gathering bark and my friend explained that bark doesn’t burn too well and if we wanted this thing up and going as we’d planned we needed to just use some very small pieces of chopped up wood and scraps we had lying around. I didn’t know that so I learned something new. At the same time, I was then able to help him gather the right material.

With your blog you must also use the right material. Make sure you are always giving your readers good and useful information. Make sure you keep it coming on a regular basis and at least let them know when you’re not going to be around for a while and give an approximate time line too. It’s better to do this than to just quit blogging and then come back as that = readers lost!

Use The Right Tools

When we first started building this fire of ours we poured some lighter fluid (I think it was lol) on the scraps and wood and tried getting it started. I soon discovered that it doesn’t just burst into flames by doing this but after it catches on it does take off a bit. My friend went ahead and poured on some motor oil (again, I think it was) and the stuff sizzled and kept things burning much longer.

You need to have the right tools to make the job work for you. This in a way is kind of like having your money work for you instead of “just” working for your money. Use WordPress or whatever blogging platform you like. Everyone uses WordPress because it’s just damn good. Don’t feel like going with the crowd then that’s fine but look at results and just check it out anyway. Use good hosting and buy a good domain name. This all adds up over time given you got what you need.

Also on this one, plugins come in extremely handy so make sure you have plugins that are going to very much help you out.

Take Action

This one might as well be a dead horse but it can’t be because it’s the end all of what brings about those results you’re looking for.

We just gathered everything, laid it as we wanted it and just did it. And we kept doing it and it worked and we had fun. What more can I say…? It was a great time!

With your blog you just need to start writing articles about something you know and love. Forget making any damn money just yet. I’m not yet and look at how many I have. Hell, I have yet to get a mailing list and I’m still blogging and even changing up my topics from time to time as you can tell reading some past posts. So just get out there and do something, anything, maybe even something you don’t like. You’re never going to know if you like it if you just think about it and don’t do it!

Improve As You Go

As the fire kept going we kept adding bigger pieces of wood to it and kept helping it out with motor oil and just stood there chatting and having a good time. We watched it and made sure it got to the point we were looking for. Always helpful to keep at it and improve until you get the desired results you’re looking for.

With your blog, figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Look at others and watch what they do. Don’t just copy them but do something similar and then monitor your own results. Keep going and keep improving. My blog may not work like your blog will. That’s why you have to change things up a bit. Again with the dead horse, take action, and it’s not dead because it’s what everything just comes down to. Period.

Monitor Your Results

As we did something about the fire and the wood and the material we used and we kept improving as we went we had to monitor what was happening and make sure things were going as planned. They were and the improvements helped.

With your blog you need to know where you’re at at all times, or at least most times. Keep checking things out and as you improve take notice of what happened and then keep track of that. This is the only way you’re really going to know where you’ve come from and where you’re going. This is huge in showing how you’ve improved and explaining your results to people who may not believe what you say about how to do it. Prove it, show the results you have because you took the time to get them. They’re so worth it!

Think For Next Time

We didn’t talk about what we were going to do for the next time we got together or even for next fire. We probably will build a fire and maybe even a bigger fire somewhere a bit safer and with better material and more time. Who knows.

With your blog, if you mess up or even if an idea failed just dust yourself off and go for it again. Learn from your mistakes and keep at it for the next round. You’re never going to learn unless there’s a next time. And if you don’t mess up (pretty unlikely) then congratulations!

So, what does everyone think?

Vital Parts Your Site Needs – Pop Post

This is a Pop Post by James Richmond from TheInfoPreneur.net. James is an incredible blogger who hasn’t been at it for very long (about 3 months) and is the ultimate example of how hard work will bring you amazing results. I’ve been with him since about the beginning of his blog and have seen what he can do.

I recommend everyone who reads this post visit his blog and discover someone who is more than willing to help you out with whatever you need and can push content out like there literally is no tomorrow. Enough said, though I could go on and if you want more please read inspiration, smart work, success | the infopreneur.

Over to you, James.

Let’s just get this out of the way first, I’m not a marketing expert or a web 2.0 guru, in fact I have no qualifications at all. So why read the rest of this post then? Well, despite my methods and mentality not working for everyone, it works for me, so read on and give it a shot.

Millions of new websites are created every week and within weeks most of then are already starting to fail. A website, your website is your megaphone, your worldwide banner that says ‘Come and listen to me’ but why do so many fail where the minority succeed?

I have never paid for a coaching programme, never paid for advertising and have made a stack of mistakes, but I firmly believe the main reason after 3 months my site is growing is because of these simple but vital parts;

  • Drive

I’m driven you have to be, in my opinion it’s the only way to succeed. A website with no drive is going no where, it’s simple. Imagine a car, any car without an engine. It becomes a piece of scrap without any drive, you need to want to tell people about your thoughts and opinions.

Drive can come from anything around you or something that you yet to have around you. My family and my full time job drive me to over produce and keep moving forward, I want to spend more time with my family and leave my full time 60hr working week job, so I’m driven to achieving that as quick as I can.

  • Passion

You need to be passionate about your topic, I don’t care if it’s an article about pin cushions or rocket engines, if there is passion behind it I will read it. You know what I’m talking about, you would and probably still come across, websites that just talk about the same old blurb everyone else talks about and it’s a boring read.

On the same thread, you can really tell if someone is passionate about that topic and whether you’re into it or not, that will inspire you and it’s this point you need to have in abundance. Passion for your subject matter will transform you into yet another site people will close straight away into a website with real fire and fuel to keep it burning for a long time.

  • Accessible

How many times have you gone to contact a site owner and never been able to find out how to do it, or have had to go to site map and track their contact page or email down that way? It really gets to me when owners do this, the other thing that drives me mad is when the author of the content never interacts with their readers.

If people are taking the time to read, spread and reply to your content then the very least you should do is to thank them and talk to them in the comments section or the forum you have created. No matter what you need to be present for your visitors, customers or readers to actually reach out and shake your hand, no hand shake, no business.

  • Readers

Every site needs visitors, fact. No traffic no website. Your readers are the very reason you write new content or produce latest products for them to buy. Without your readers you are nothing, absolutely nothing. I want you to really think about that, without your readers you wouldn’t even be thinking of how to take it to the next level, so make damn sure you look after them.

All these are the vital components of a successful website, SEO, links etc all important yes, but without these vital parts the site is on life support with only one outcome.

When You Should Follow That Blog

My Google Reader account is full of blogs. So full in fact that I have to talk myself into using the damn thing because more often than not I can remember out of just thinking about it what blogs I visit on a daily basis and get there myself, without the help of the reader.

That being said, I feel now that there is a time you should look into actually adding a blog to your RSS reader because it matters. You might be thinking… But don’t all blogs that have something useful to say matter? Yes, if it’s going to add value to your daily life. Not if it’s just something you can remember easliy and has a few good articles every once in a while.

My point with this has to do with a few factors about blogs in general which are…

Amazing And Catchy Titles

I write the title of my articles first and I recommend you do the same. I heard about this from CopyBlogger.com and the reason it’s recommended is because it’s a starting point to what you’re going to talk about in your article. Have a great title and use some key words each time. Make sure it makes sense and that it will catch attention of certain people and make them want to know more. This is where it all starts because if no article catches their attention then you’re never going to have them visit that article.

Amazing Content To Backup Your Titles

This is just as important in my opinion. Make sure that you provide extremely useful content that is related to your title in some way and that really stands out in how you present it. At first you might suck at writing but if you’re writing about something you’re passionate about it really shouldn’t take long before you really do become better at it. Let your article inspire people, teach them something, allow them to think about what you’re saying, have solid and meanginful points and ask them questions to really get something going on in their heads. Do all of this each and every time you write an article about anything and watch what happens.

Interact

Everyone knows about commenting and it’s important to do so. If you want to know what everyone thinks about what you have to say you need to ask them to do do this. More important, whether you have 50 comments a day or 2 comments a day is replying back and interacting with people. This shows so much about your blog and about you. Do this and watch what happens. On top of this you need to at least visit the blogs that comment on your blog to see if there’s anything you can find of value and return the favor with. If not, that’s ok. But you should at least put in the extra effort to show you appreciate something they have to say in case you do find something worth saying on their end of things.

Re-Tweet

There’s more than just tweeting out there to help spread the word about your blog and your fellow bloggers, I understand that. Tweets however, are one of the biggest ways of spreading information around so do something to allow your content to be spread because if it’s good enough (and you’ll know if it is) then you want to provide a way of doing this. Also, make sure you remember to return the favor to others who provide excellent content and value. Give them love too.

My bottom line with all of this is quite simple. This is just the basics of what I feel makes a decent blog… Yes a decent one. Look at these factors to see if that blog is worth keeping in your RSS reader. If so, keep it. If not, maybe it’s time to reconsider why it’s still sitting there.

Why am I putting this statement out there? Because this is one huge factor to look at to make sure you’re getting value for your time and maybe someone can think about doing all of this to maintain their stability in YOUR RSS reader for days and more to come.

Keep all this in mind when loading up whatever reader you use and consider why you read each blog there when you visit it. I make sure there’s enough good articles that really catch my eye and I make sure that they’re always interacting with their commenters and maintaining things nicely. Consistency is a big factor in keeping up with things.

Ok… Now to you my loyal friends, family and fellow bloggers.

What do you consider to be worth keeping certain blogs in your RSS feed readers each time you visit them?

Write Your Blog Posts With Doing And Learning In Mind

I wanted to let be known before going into this particular article I’m about to write that I am currently trying out Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Course (affiliate link) and signed up right from his blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. I paid my dollar and am currently taking this course as well as Become A Blogger Premium.

Listening to an audio for about half an hour just now I came up with this idea and it makes sense and will hopefully help you for some if not all of your future writings in a big way.

I won’t go into detail and give away any information about his course just yet as I’m currently brand new to it but I will say that I’ve not done much with it and I feel that it’s already definitely worth the amount of money he’s asking for it. I say this because I personally feel it’s got great value, not because I want you to take his course unless you also feel he’s someone to trust giving your money to because he’ll give you great value as well. I encourage you to decide that one for yourself.

Now to my article.

Doing

Something to keep in mind when writing blog posts is delivering an important message to our readers. We also should look at how we come across in our message that we deliver and make sure we’re doing it in an appropriate way in which benefits those who read it so they can take something away from it. Doing this will allow you to show your expertise in the topic you’re covering even if you don’t know that much about it.

This is important because it shows you’re interests and it also shows that you’re willing to admit you may not know all that much but are more than happy to help anyone out with the knowledge you do have by talking with people and helping them in the way of your words.

Videos are also a good way of doing this because videos literally show you there talking to your readers and letting them know you’re willing to connect with them on a more personal level. This isn’t for everyone but those who do decide to add video once in a while will surely gain more attraction to their blogs and deliver a more powerful message. That’s something to really consider when doing video, however, is exactly how you’re going to deliver your message.

Doing a video for your readers isn’t nearly as important in my opinion as how you present yourself in your video. A bad video can be worse than well written text on your blog which informs your readers of valuable information. A great video can add much higher quality rewards than text does when done right and when both are presented with each other amazing results could come about. Bottom line here is that every blog is different so experiment but make sure you’re presenting whatever content you’re delivering, in whatever way you’re delivering it with a bang for your readers enjoyment and fullness.

Learning

This is something you want to keep in mind to allow growth and improvement to your blog at all times. Ask your readers what they think and let them add to the story you tell. Allow your readers to share what they know about what you have to say and then explain to them how you feel in a positive manner by replying to everyone worth while.

Everyone should get replied to until it gets too overwhelming and for this to happen it could take months or years so I don’t think it’s going to be hard to actually follow this to the core. If you’re readers have something they would like to share with you simply let them have the opportunity. This is what life is about in general. You put out there what you know and who you are and then take in what you can and continue to improve yourself. Let your readers have a chance to put something out there for you to improve yourself with.

A blog is nothing without readers and everything with them even if they’re not customers yet or ever will be. A blog doesn’t necessarily need to have readers as a blog can exist without them but things go much further when there’s interaction.

The bottom line here is to learn and keep learning by letting interaction between anyone who has something of value to add to what you provide them to shine. Doing this will pay off much reward down the line.

This is what came to mind from listening to an audio from Yaro’s course that I just had to write and talk about to those who are interested in blogging and learning to improve their skills as a blogger.

If you’re ready to learn how to provide more value to your readers and gain more value from them by doing so, I encourage you to at least check out his course (affiliate link) and see what it might have to offer you. By no means am I saying for you to sign up for it or anything of that nature. This is all up to you.

Have you taught those who visit your blog anything of value and have you allowed them the opportunity to connect with you and others through your message?

Everything You Do Can Make Or Break Your Blog: Here’s How – Pop Post

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?

Real Or Robot

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?

The Way I Blog With Ease

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?

Blogging Is Important… Here’s Why

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!

Inspiration, Smart Work, Success | The InfoPreneur

I’m still new at blogging and working my way up the ladder. There’s a lot of people who are doing the same thing I am. Far too many of you who are just starting out are in a real mess and you probably don’t even realize it. Not to worry because there’s someone out there who is making it happen and they also just started like the rest of us. Who, you ask? The InfoPreneur.

His name is James Richmond and he’s 28 years old currently living in England. He’s very family oriented and very much focused on his blog as well.

What makes him stand out from the crowd is what a lot of new bloggers don’t realize or just don’t do. Write and promote is his motto and do it at full speed. If you have something to say then say it and be quick about it while of course adding value to your words that your readers crave and come back for.

He’s definitely one of a kind and he’s proving that daily to all his readers through his posts and if you haven’t heard of him I recommend checking out his blog at TheInfoPreneur.net.

He will teach you many things and mostly how to win by not giving up and going for it. So many big time bloggers out there want you to buy their stuff and want to tell you the secret to success. You’ve heard it so many times you’re probably sick and have no idea where to turn to because you’re not going to believe anyone is real when it comes to the right information. I feel you. I feel the same way and can honestly say he’s the real deal.

He doesn’t talk about the secret of success and he doesn’t go into detail about how to make the big bucks. He’s straight forward and tells it like it is and explains exactly how he’s doing it. Honestly, don’t even take my advice here. Just go visit his blog if you want proof. Results NEVER lie and results are what he’s getting.

He’s getting results because he busts his ass and says you should do the same and you can do the same if you want it bad enough. Go check out his blog and learn from a true beginner how to drive down the road to real success without crap slowing you down.

What success are you after and what are you doing about achieving it?