Tag Archives | blogging

Become a Blogging Success (advice from the CyberNet)

Apr/11 in Interviews

One of the popular blogs out there that I really enjoy a lot is CyberNet. They always have fresh content, good reviews and reminds me of a younger and more influential Lockergnome.com. The minds behind the project – Ryan and Ashley are brilliant at what they do and have had a lot of success along the way. Then it came to me, who better to ask for advice about taking your blog to the next level than them? E-mails were sent, virtual handshakes were made and a conversation was had…

When did you know it was time to really put your all into CyberNet and try to do your best at making some money with it? Was it your goal from day one or was it something that you decided to do later on down the road?

Ryan: Our goal from day one wasn’t to make money; CyberNet was originally started as a hobby. Our goal was to do our best and put our all into it, and to write great content and tutorials that you wouldn’t find on many other sites out there. I guess you could say we were focused on quality and not quantity. We were actually surprised at the time it took to maintain a site with quality articles and we realized if we wanted to continue to provide the content, we had to find a way to make money with it. It wasn’t until about a year ago that Ashley and I both started working on CyberNet full-time.

Out of all of the money making methods out there today, which has been the most and least successful for you thus far?

Continue Reading →

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Mix a Story with Your Next Article

Mar/28 in Writing Advice

What Would Ryu Do? For those of you who may not know the best way to lead into a post, but you think you might have something to say one tool or trick of the trade (depending on how you want to look at it) would be to use a story to add some meat and potatoes to you thoughts and ideas.

Give me some content, then tell me some of the story.  Then give me more content, then give me more of the story.  This is a great way to both entertain and inform the visitors at large.  This is also extremely handy when your writing about a subject that might be a little vanilla and dull for the mass public. 

Need some help?  With your next post mix in a story about Ryu from Street Fighter fame and his trouble with buying a new pair of shoes.  (Does he even wear shoes?) 

So there is your homework for the weekend.  With the next thing you write up, tech opinion, help or how-to; try to bring a story into the mix.  It doesn’t have to be a true story, it could be a fictional character from the back of your brain.  Flesh out the weak points with him (or her) and you’ll keep your readers a ‘bit more interested in what you are trying to tell them.

What would Ryu do?

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Windows Live Writer Rocks

Feb/17 in Desktop Apps

Ok, maybe I am a little behind the times – or am very careful before I give Microsoft the fair shake. Whatever my reason was, I never tried Windows Live Writer till the other day. I figured it would be like every other blog updater I’ve seen out there. It would do everything but (insert feature here). Well, I am happy to say that Windows Live Writer does it all – and does it well.

I am damned impressed with the entire product. I hate to sound like an anti-Microsoft goon, but it is a little hard to believe they developed such a nice product. (Just in case any of the Microsoft guys are reading, really don’t mean that as a back handed compliment) It worked with WordPress right off the bat too with no problems at all.

Inserting pictures into posts is as easy as dragging the image from the desktop of folder into the main editing window of Live Writer. It gets automatically uploaded, just as any other image would to my hosting account. The in-dept draft feature is nice too. I can save as a draft here on my machine, or on the server.

The only downside I have found (and this might be more my fault than Microsoft’s) is the Web Layout preview doesn’t work that well with all of the various places I write. Other than that though I would highly encourage any and all to go check it out if you haven’t. Windows Live Writer is definitely worth your time for sure and won’t cost you any money.

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Learn to Lead with your Writing

Jan/03 in Writing Advice

If you can learn to write by leading your reader and holding his hand through the work – you can become better than you ever thought you could be.

Writing is one of those skills that everybody can do, but not many can master. If you broke it up into a chart you would have those who can’t being a very small percentage of the pie, those who have mastered it being another slightly larger pie piece and then those who are “somewhere in the middle” taking the rest of the cake pie.  Continue Reading →

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Conversation With a Content Theft Artist

Jul/24 in Hot Web Topics, Web Development Tutorials

Blog Content TheftI don’t like having my stuff stolen or abused. Unlike most folks though that just roll over and take it – I like to do my best to fight back.

If nobody fights back against these guys, they win and we all have to pay the price for it. I recently found one web site that will go un-named (no reason to give these guys free press) stealing content from my podcast, WebHostingShow.com. Here is the un-edited version of his responses. I sent the first e-mail asking for the content to removed and for him to respond within five days or less.

Not totally out of the question – right? Here is his reply:

Hello Mr. Keller, we are not using site webhostingshow.com for these news, than using rss feeds from domaintools.com. And under every message there is your name and your email – notice to people that YOU have written those texts. So, please see with domaintools.com are using their rss feeds are legal or not.

Oh so they are saying it’s DomainTools.com that is stealing my content – not them. Hu? Yeah didn’t make much sense to me either – the DomainTools.com folks are a great team of people, not like this idiot who can’t even spell my name correctly. I replied trying to clarify, here is the next response:

Mr Keeler, we are using material that domaintools.com provides via rss feeds for free. So I do not see any copyright abuse. If you think this material is copyrighted, please contact domaintools.com first. If they remove your blogs from their site, they will be automatically removed from our site, too.

Oh so all content published via RSS feeds are free for the taking, happy I got that cleared up.. no wait, it is still my copyrighted material I did not give him permission to post. That is the fact plain and simple – so yet again I try to explain the situation and ask for some clarification.

Wish I could say this story had a happy ending, but afraid thus far it is not looking that way.

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Mitch Got Pownced

Jul/05 in Online Apps, Personal

Mitch Got Pownced!No I didn’t say pantsed – I said Pownced! Even though I only have one friend thus far via the new service, I have to say I am pretty impressed.

It seems to deliver a ‘bit more than some of the other “twitter-like” services out there and if it picks up in popularity I could see myself maybe even becoming a paid member.

Come visit me and add me as a friend! Be my buddy!

http://pownce.com/mitchkeeler

Pownce has all of the neat features to become a winner, now all it needs is a user base to take advantage of it. Not really much else to say about it because I really need some friends added before I can give it a hearty review. Are you on there? If so feel free to add me as an amigo, buddy and/or friend.

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Mitch’s Web Writing Stats

Apr/05 in Personal

crazy-mitch-small.jpgI have spend some time here lately trying to figure out exactly how much I write in the span of a year. If you follow any of my other projects or places that I post you probably know I do an awful lot. What is my digital footprint? Well here are some estimates by project:

Lockergnome’s Web Developers
20 Articles in a Month / 6,000 Words in a Month
I would estimate that I write around 300 words per article and I write five articles a week, so that ends up being around, well… a big number. Never realized I go on and on about Web development issues that much!

Lockergnome’s Windows Fanatics
8 Articles in a Month / 2,200 Words in a Month
Here I do 2 articles a week, with around 250 to 300 words per article. For argument’s sake, lets just call it 275. Loads of good freeware reviews there.

Mitchelaneous
20 Articles in a Month / 6,000 Words in a Month
On this fine Web site I do around 5 articles a week at around 300 words per article. Very similar with my numbers for Lockergnome’s Web Developers.

The Web Hosting Show
20 Articles in a Month / 7,000 Words in a Month
Sure, this is my podcast – but there are still a lot of show notes and posts to make. Here I would raise the average length per post to be around 350 per article with 5 posts per week for the hosting podcast.

Firefox Facts
20 Articles in a Month / 5,000 Words in a Month
This one might be a little lower than average since the posts are kind of simple and “quick tips”. At Firefox Facts I try to post 5 times a week and the word count comes in at around 250 per post.

Lunartics
4 Articles in a Month / 1,200 Words in a Month
This is the 1 place I write the least at. When doing my best, I try to have a least 1 post a week (even though I have missed the past 2 weeks because I have been so busy). That 1 post per week is around 300 words.

So what do the final numbers say about how much I go on and on about the topics I like to write about?

In 1 Month I Write 32,800 Words.
In 1 Month I Write 92 Articles or Posts.

In 1 Year I Write 393,600 Words.
In 1 Year I Write 1,104 Articles or Posts.

If the average number of words per page in a book is 250, and the average number of pages per book is 300 then the average book has 75,000 words. With that being said, I will write the equivalent of a little over 5 books (5.348 to be exact) in the span of 1 year. What is your digital footprint? How many books could you have written out of your blogging ways?

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Saved Links Folder for Writers

Feb/19 in Personal

Here is a quick tip for any writers or bloggers (writers in my opinion sounds much more dignified). When you run across a story or an article that you might want to write more about later – you can create a “saved links” folder to move it into for the time being.

For example, lets say you see this post here come across your feed reader of choice. Now instead of trying to remember the link, or saving it to one of the many social bookmarking services out there – you could have me saved right to your bookmark bar.

Saved LinksThe good thing about this is that it is just one click away to get rid of it when you don’t need it anymore. Just hit the old right click – then delete bookmark and you are done.

Let me know if you would like to see more of these quick tips and I’d be more than happy to share how I do things here in the content creation department.

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Review Me Shows Promise

Nov/10 in Online Apps, Personal

Now I have touched on the topic of getting “paid to post” entries and how stupid all of this fighting back and forth has been with the ego bloggers against the regular “Joes” and “Janes” on the street. It all comes down to one simple idea. Do you want to do what you want to do or do you want to let a small group of popular bloggers dictate the “rules of blogging” to you? I picked the first choice.

This afternoon I signed up with Review Me, and in turn I am going to be getting paid $30 once this post is posted and done with. With that said, if you go through the Web site and want me to write about something it will only cost you $30 as well (looks like they bumped me up to $60). Not too bad of a price, I must say. Some people are getting up to $250 – but I don’t know who is going to really pay that much for one post. I probably could have had a higher number, but since the domain name switch a few months ago I have been building link popularity all over again.

The idea behind Review Me is simple, you sign up and they judge how much you are worth by popularity. Once that is done and you get in, advertisers will come to you and ask you to write about them. Now you do not have to post a positive review but you do have to disclose somewhere that you are doing paid posts. I think this is a nice balance and should keep the ego bloggers at bay for now.

I am looking at this as more than just another way to get some cash. That is nice and all, but I sometimes really need to find a good muse. Interesting ideas are not that easy to find so if I have people feeding me ideas and offering to pay me to write it, that is every real writer’s dream come true.

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PayPerPost Isn’t Evil

Oct/09 in Hot Web Topics

ppp.jpgIt sounds like I am one of the few people out there that doesn’t think PayPerPost is evil.

I think the main problem some “big names” have with PayPerPost is that it sends the perks over to somebody else. Big blogs are used to having everybody and their grandmother fawn over them, so this change might be difficult. The super successful blog will be as relevant as the blog that is getting paid an extra dollar or two for the same post.

Want to toss ethics in there? I read through the PayPerPost Web site, and not once did I see that they are holding a gun to your head and making you post about something you don’t like. For some folks, I could see PayPerPost being more of an inspiration engine. Run out of good ideas to write about? Pick something interesting from the list that you like (or would like to try) and make a little extra on the side.

I think it is about time the nobodies stood up and said they don’t want chances being taken away by massive egos in the blogging world. If anybody doesn’t like seeing posts, they can always decide not to look at them. That is the beauty of the Internet! You can read who you want to read, support who you want to support and you don’t have to listen to anybody trying to play the role of the Internet’s conscience.

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