Writing and marketing a blog has to be one of the most diverse occupations known to man, and one of the easiest from which to get distracted! As well as writing posts and answering comments, there are so many other tasks to take care of relating to research, dealing with email, “being around” on social media sites and so on.

Do you ever find a two hour blogging session has simply passed, without you actually achieving what you wanted to do? Do you find that some elements of the job are always running behind, whilst others (usually the ones you like) are going really well?

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Following on from my post about measuring blogging statistics, I promised to let you know how I measure and manage my income statistics.

It’s actually quite hard work, because there are several sources of income! By the time you’ve checked a dozen or so affiliate programs, looked at Adsense stats and recorded your outgoings, it’s often a two hour job.

And if one of your objectives is to earn money from blogging, then I urge you to treat it like a business from day one. Faithfully record all your income and outgoings and stay on top of it!  read more »

You may have read on various parts of the web about Ford Motor Company’s plan to lend 100 new Fiestas to bloggers and web savvy people for a six month period. The idea is that these people will obviously write about their experience with the cars, as well as various tasks Ford will set them to and report on during their tenure.

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Long distance runners have an expression. They call it “hitting the wall.” If you’ve ever run a few miles, you’ll know the feeling. It’s when every fiber of your body is screaming “Stop"! When your lungs are about to burst, and your muscles feel as though they are going to explode. Most runners stop, or at least slow down at this point. But what happens when you keep going? Something really quite magical! The pain subsides, you can breathe again and you feel stronger with every stride.

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I’m quite well known for my dislike of “Twitter Rules” posts. There was a period earlier this year when every post I read about Twitter seemed to suggest a set of rules to follow – a right way to Tweet, a wrong way to get more followers and so on.

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I have a dream with POW – it may be a stretch, but I’ll share it with you. In my dream POW becomes the “Oscars” of blogging.  In my dream, the great bloggers will all strive to have their posts selected for POW. In my dream there will be a once a year ceremony in a cool city somewhere, which will be covered by national media and live Tweeted. In my dream all the weekly winners will pick the overall winner for POY, or post of the year. In my dream Gary Vaynerchuk will be the MC. In my dream, I’ll be up on stage handing the winner’s trophy to a Chris Brogan or a Darren Rowse. In my dream…………….  read more »

We all know that the email list is a vital component of our blogger’s toolkit. Having investigated and used my own “in house” email system, and one from another provider, I’m left in no doubt that Aweber provides the best email system for us. So how do we get the best out of it?

List Segmentation

With Aweber, you can have as many lists as you want. Each list has it’s own emails and follow ups. This is a huge advantage, because it means you can really “drill down” into your niche. If your blog is about cookery, for example, you can have a separate list for vegetarians, so it’s easy to target them when you have a specific article or product to offer them. But if you want to send a general newsletter to all your subscribers, in every segment, it’s still easy to do so.  read more »

We all do it everyday. We all take this amazing thing we have literally at the tips of our fingers for granted:

• School homework was about Encyclopedia and Dad’s brain
• Booking holidays meant thumbing through brochures, then calling into a shop with cash
• Checking your bank balance required queuing in front of a glass window
• Writing a presentation took days of research, followed by writing slides on OHP film
• Tracking down an old friend meant half a dozen phone calls

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In this video post I ask if we’re really using the power, the sheer numbers we have available to us, thanks to the internet, to make our products affordable.

I also ask for your help – the beard. Should it stay, or should it go?

Would the dog sit down quietly? See for yourself.

If you’ve been blogging for more than a few weeks, chances are you’ve asked yourself these types of questions from time to time:

• What can I write about today?
• How can I write about that topic when I’ve already covered it?
• How can I write about this topic when everyone else has done it to death?

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If any of these are familiar, read on:

What you need to do is get your creative juices flowing. Here are some tips:  read more »