It’s a tough question to answer, but an important one  nonetheless. Just like finding your posting frequency, post length depends heavily on the depth you go into, niche,  readers, and even your posting frequency. Now, I’ve read a ton of theories that say very short or very long posts are horrible SEO wise, but I believe that finding your ideal post length should again revolve around the topic at hand, the overall niche, and two other variables, so I won’t be touching on SEO here. Maybe another post though.

1. Deeper the depth means longer the length

It seems pretty obvious, but when you look at post length it should mostly depend on just how deep into a topic you go. This post – for example – goes into what I would call some detail, making it an average length, around 500 words long. But if you go into more depth like I did in my post about getting comments on your blog you need to have a longer post – about 1000 words – to cover everything you need to.

2. Your niche really matters

Think about it this way – if your writing news updates, like engadget does, your posts are typically going to be short compared to say a tutorials which usually need to go into a lot of detail.

3. Your readers really matter too

We’ll as long as your writing for people and not search engines your post length should revolve around them. People now-a-days have a very short attention span, including myself, but there are ways around this. You could make your posts readable or at least scanable – which are two very different things – making sure your readers can go through an article and it won’t seem like a task to them.

4. Posting frequency – more posts means shorter posts

Now this doesn’t always hold true but the great majority of the time when people write more posts it means that they are shorter – again think about engadget or uncrate. They post multiple short articles through out the day.

My goal here was to give you a basis of what I think post length should depend on. But in the end it boils down to these two questions, “did I explain everything I needed to?” and “can this do the job in a shorter post?”

Image By lissalou66

That’s right, my car taught me something about blogging. It was two days ago, I had to change my engine oil before the weekend since I was at 3500 miles since the last time (500 miles over my normal). Because I didn’t want to put even more wear and tear on the car by adding another 500 miles over the weekend, I needed to change it. The only thing was that it was about 6 degrees Fahrenheit (-14.4 degrees Celsius) and with the wind chill it was probably below 0.

Long story short I went out in the freezing weather and I withstood the bone chilling winds to change my oil, because I knew I needed to to keep my car running long enough to turn a profit with my delivery job

This whole experience where my hands almost fell off taught me two very important things about blogging.

Never give up.

Somewhere between my nose nearly freezing and my hands becoming so numb that I could no longer feel them. I truly wanted to give up and call it quits.
This carries over into blogging cause I know a lot of people (including me) hit walls at some point and they get tempted to just call it quits. If their traffic drops they just wanna quit and sell the blog, well my advice to you is DON”T. You need to keep going and get back on track. You can break through the walls with the right mindset. (read my comment and Wei’s reply)

Keep up the maintenance.

If I just kept up on my oil changes, I would have changed it a week earlier when temperatures were above freezing. My whole ordeal could have been avoided completely.
How does this transcend into blogging? Well if you just keep up your promotion methods, link building and posting there would be no reason for your blog to fall. Your traffic will only go up and you would avoid “the wall” and intern your blog will live another day.

Whats your opinion on hitting walls and what not, would you just give up or keep going strong?

Image by: Mcgraths

Well recently I’ve had  a few people say that they like the pictures I use in my posts. Alot of them, Klajdi, Swastik, and Ajith to name a few, asked me to tell them how I do it. It’s surprisingly easy, I swear I even did a comment-post about it over at my writers block post. You technically don’t even need to own a camera to get perfect pictures for each of your posts. All you need is internet and a little time.

My perfect picture (not so) secrets:

Knowing the Creative Commons Licenses.

The most important part of finding the right images for your posts is actually knowing what you can and cannot use. Also knowing what you need when you use them and what you can and/or cannot do with the them. The licenses are pretty simple, and theirs only a couple of them.

The first one is the Attribution License. If the picture you want to uses this one then, your pretty much allowed to use it and edit  it as you wish, but you need to link to the author.

Number two is the Attribution-NoDerivs License. This one basically means you can use the picture but you CANNOT alter, transform, or build upon it and you need to link to the author just like the Attribution License.

Special number three is the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License. It’s much like the Attribution-NoDerivs License but a little more complicated. You can use the picture but NOT for commercial purposes, you cannot alter, transform or build upon the picture and you need to link to the author.

Numero quatro is the Attribution-NonCommercial License. If the image you wanna use is under this license, then your allowed to use it but not for a commercial purpose. You can also alter, transform, or build upon the picture but like the other Licenses you need to “attribute” to the author (aka link to em)

The fifth is the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. It’s just like the fourth License (above this one) but with one added term, if you do share it/use it after altering, transforming, or building upon the picture you need to share it with the same license (ShareAlike)

Last But not least you have the Attribution-ShareAlike License.This one is just like the first but with the added term of the fifth. Your allowed to share/use these images as you wish, you can alter, transform or build upon the picture but you need to share it with the same license.

I stay away from the Non Commercial licenses but I honestly don’t know what qualifies as “commercial” and I have yet to figure it out. So if some one here can explain it in simple, layman’s terms tell me in a comment and I’ll add here.

Where to find the pictures?

Ok, so you know what the different creative commons licenses are, where can you possibly find a place that has a ton of pictures that use em? Well if you look at most of the picture sources, such as the one about getting more comments at your blog, you’ll see that it’s from the one and only flickr.

I use their advanced search page, and I try a few different terms/keywords that my post has. For my writers block post I simply typed is “writers block, like so:

Then I just checked the two boxes at the bottom like so:

This way I know that I can use the pictures here without worrying about lawsuits and threatening letters. I usually check the third box also just so I can safely put that text on the top. Anyway I just hit search and go through the results and pick out my favorite one.

Like I said earlier it’s a simple process, it won’t take you more than 10 minutes per a picture. So how do you find pictures for your post? Do you do anything differently?

P.S. Don’t for get to check out my post 10 tips to writing better posts, and find out why images in posts are important.

Image by: Smanography

I get writers block every three months and if you have me on your MSN list you may already know that this past couple days, I’ve had the worst case of it EVER. I had no problem coming up with topics, but I couldn’t write about them. Everything I tried to write turned into complete shit, and it took me a while to realize but eventually it hit me. I needed to cure it this time, cause time alone wouldn’t do it for me.

What I Did:

1. Stopped trying to write, and took a breather.

The first thing I did is stop trying to write, I figured why waste time trying to do something I knew wasn’t gonna happen. So I closed up shop and shut my laptop, got a jacket and took a long drive with one of my friends to the candy store she loves. I wanted to take a break from the internet for a little bit and just clear my mind and sorta evaluate my problem.

2. Got rid of the stress.

On my long drive it hit me, I stress out a lot and sometimes that stress turns into a sorta depression, and that was the cause of my block. So as soon as I got back home I finished all my home work and projects and even changed the oil on my car. I got rid of all the worries I could in order to get rid of all those subconscious thoughts. Because there’s no real instant cure I still needed to wait a little while before I got back to normal but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t do anything.

3. Worked in the back end.

Like I said earlier, only time will cure your writers block even if your stress free, so do something else. Instead of writing, I went around the net and promoted this place. I did some blog commenting and what not, but you can try to get more RSS subscribers, maybe start building links and traffic from forums, shit maybe even figure out how to monetize your blog better. Their are other ways you can do “back end” work for your blog, so do it.

Well, I know every one is different but you should use the same steps the next time you have a bad case of writers block.
1. Take a breather and access the problem.
2. Solve the problem.
3. Do something while you wait.

Have you had writers block before? What do you recommend doing about it?

Guest posting is a major time-tested promotion technique that is overlooked by most new bloggers. One of the biggest reasons most new bloggers stay away from guest posting is because they think, “Why should I give the other guys my awesome content.” If you happen to be one of them, you can take that thought and throw it away and here’s why:

1. Get new traffic by the truckload.

Lets say that you get about 100 visits a day to your blog , then you get the opportunity to guest post on a blog that gets 10,000+ visits each and every day. Well if only a quarter of those visitors follow your link that means you are gonna get 2,500 hits instead of the measly 100, plus it won’t just stop there. Your going to get constant waves of traffic as the host site is still going to get those 10,000+ visits every day, and with a post on the front page your constantly getting that exposure.

Now what do all these visits mean? You get more comments, a larger audience and a bunch of subscribers.

2. Double, triple or even quadruple your comments.

I love comments, they make me feel like people actually read and like my posts and they add a sense of community to your blog. Now with all the traffic you get from your guest posts your bound to get many more comments, you may go from 20 comments per a post to 40 or even 60 comments per a post.

3. More subscribers!!

I’ve already told you how you can get more rss subscribers for your blog but I left out guest posting when I wrote it. With each visit you have another potential rss subscriber and really who doesn’t like subscribers. Lets say you get 300 subscribers from guest posting, which means with each new post you can get another 300 subscribers visiting your blog on top of your regular traffic.

4. Links galore.

This is a great domino effect of guest posting on those big guys blogs. You won’t only get a link from the hosts blog, but you’ll get link from all the sites that blog about your post. This not only affects your search engine rankings but your Technorati rank as well.

I hope this convinces all of you new bloggers that guest posting really is worthwhile. If you start to think that it isn’t worth it again, just ask your self, “Do I want all that traffic, those comments and the wonderful subscribers?”

Image by: scottiet812

The age old question, “How often should I post on my blog?” I’ve seen this same question asked way too many times on forums, I always tell them the same thing. “It varies from blog to blog.” Some blogs just naturally need more posts than others to make their readers happy.

What your posting frequency depends on.

1. Your niche.

The topic of your blog is the biggest deciding factor of how often you should post. Typically a blog with a wide niche or a niche that has a lot of breaking news each day, such as a gadget blog or pop culture blog, will need a lot more posts than a blog that’s nuclear engineering.

2. Your writing style.

If your like me you like to write longer, quality, in depth posts so you can get away with posting once every 2 or 3 days. Where as some people like to write short and to the point posts, they can do an easy 4 posts a day.

3. Your readers preferences.

It’s a fact that your readers will unsubscribe from your blog or out right stop visiting because of your posting frequency. Some people like 4 or 5 posts a day while others may not like more than 3 or 4 a week. It’s up to you to find a fair medium that will make all your readers happy.

4. Where your traffic is coming from.

A huge part of posting frequency has to do with where the bulk of your traffic is coming from. If you have mostly  search engine traffic you want a lot of posts daily, as this means you will have more pages in search engines, which will translate to more visitors. But if you’re like me and you get the majority of your visitors from other sites (forums, blogs) and rss feeds, you don’t have to necessarily post as much.

Pros of Posting More.

1. Posting more means you have more pages search engines.

Every new post is like another landing page to your blog, the more landing pages you have the more search engine traffic your likely to get.

2. Your subscribers see you more.

Weather your subscribers are seeing you in their inbox or their RSS readers your getting them to se you more and more with each and every post.

Cons of posting More.

1. Your readers unsubscribe.

In a survey done by ProBlogger.net, blog readers voted on the top reasons they unsubscribed from a blog, the #1 reason they unsubscribed was because posting frequency was too high.

2. Running out of ideas.

Unless you have a team of bloggers or your just great at pulling posts out of thin air, your going to get writers fatigue. When you start posting 2 to 5 times a day on some blogs your gonna run out of ideas/content pretty quick. If you have a niche with a ton of daily news and you post a lot each day, you will slowly lose  passion for the topic and end up with a dead blog.

Pros of Posting Less.

1. More reader engagement.

I have noticed that when you post less frequently you get more reader engagement, more comments and more conversation with each post.

Cons of Posting Less.

1. Less traffic

This may not always hold true but most of the time you will see a decrease of traffic if you decrease your posting frequency. Posting less was actually number 2 on the top reasons people unsubscribe from blogs.

To Sum it all up.

I’s not as simple as posting more and getting more traffic, readers and subscriber.

• Your frequency depends on the niche of the blog, your writing style, your readers and your traffic sources.
• Posting more can get you more search engine traffic and gets you seen more by subscribers.
• Posting more may turn your readers away and cause writers block.
• While posting less can get more reader engagement, it can lessen your traffic.

What do you think of posting frequency? Is quality better than quantity?

Image by: gutter

A blog is only as good as the content you, the writer, puts their. So by increasing the quality of the content you increase the quality of the blog, which will in turn get you the traffic, readers, commentators and links you want so bad. Do you want to know how its done?

1. Use headlines that don’t suck.

I like to think of it this way: the headline of a blog post is like a sign on a door that draws people in to take a peek. It needs to lure your readers in  yet give them the gist of what they’re gonna get inside. A good strategy is to ask your self, “what does this article have to offer?” and not “what is this article about?”
You can add to  a headline by adding related keywords or a “power word” like secret, reveled and free. They lure people in to learn about something that is not known to most, or get some thing of value for nothing.

2. Use a compelling opening line.

My favorite part of posts are the opening lines, there the first things your readers actually read once they open up that door and walk into your post. Your opening lines should expand on your headline while making people want to continue reading the amazing content below it. You can open up the post in a couple different ways, maybe by telling a little story, sharing a quote, by making a controversial statement, or even by using some statistics. Ideally you want it to be irresistible to continue reading.

3. Go into depth.

People like details so don’t just tell them they can do something, but expand on it an tell them how they can do that something. For example if your writing about getting links, tell them the various ways to do it, and expand on each one giving its pros and cons, with an example of how you did it for your site. But you have to make sure that depth doesn’t turn into fluff.

4. Speaking of fluff!

No one wants to weed through a ton of fluff to figure out what your are trying to say. Sure but whats fluff? Its all those useless adjectives, and sentences that add nothing but length to your post. Fluff makes you seem as if you can’t communicate your ideas effectively, thus giving you an unprofessional image. So lets just cut out all the useless words, sentences and paragraphs, and shorten up your post.

5. Get a thesaurus and a dictionary.

I can’t stress this enough, every blogger should have a dictionary and thesaurus nearby. You need to know what the words your using mean, so you can use them properly and effectively. As for the thesaurus, you can’t use the same words over and over again because it gets repetitive so look up a word and use its synonym. This way you won’t sound like you have the vocabulary of a little kid.

6. Readability is everything.

Give each and every one of your posts a format which will make them easier to read. Try using sub-headings and lists, especially for the longer posts. I like doing this because although a reader may not be interested in one of my first ideas, they may like the later ones. With sub-headings they can just skim through them and they will read whatever they are interested in.

7. Please the eye.

Too much plain text gets boring for the eyes, and may turn a reader away. So give your posts the visual interest readers love.  Simple text formatting is a must for all your posts, use bold, colored or italicized text to make something of importance stand out, add an underline to some thing of importance. Formatting really helps keep the readers attention than plain text.

You should also add a minimum of one image per a post. Just try to get something that is remotely related to the content of the post. Take my last post for example, I talked about getting tons of traffic from forums so I put a picture of traffic lights in it. I think that the image along side formatting really makes it easier to read.

8. Get the readers in on it.

The end of a post is a great opportunity for increasing your comments. Ask all your readers what they think about your post and the ideas within it.

9. Link out within the post.

Once you’ve finished up your post you should read it over and look for some keywords where you can link to some older posts you’ve written or maybe a couple of related pages on other blogs. If you link out to other blogs and use headlines that don’t suck then, you can get some nice trackback traffic.

10. Spell check, proofread and edit.

Don’t hit that publish button just yet, you still need to read through it a couple of times before you can show it off to the world. You should go ahead and run spell check on your almost-finished post. Then read through it with a fine tooth comb checking for typos, making sure that it make sense when read out loud, and check all the links and formatting.

Tell me, what do you think of my tips? Got any of your own?
Tell me in a comment.

Image by: foundphotoslj

The first post, it’s usually reserved for introducing yourself and your blog, but I thought it would be fun to make it into a post that tells you how to write your first post.

The first post, is extremely important. It sets the tone for the blog, not only for the readers but for the writers as well. It’s the first impression the site gives and everyone knows the first impression is the most important as it could be the only one you get.

Ok, so what makes a good first post?

Get personal, tell em who you are.

As a reader I want to learn about you and the blog’s writers. Share pictures, past projects and  The more you share about yourself the easier it will be for me as a reader to relate to you.

Why are you here?

Its possibly the most important part of your first post. People want to know why you have this new blog, so spell out your intentions to them. You should also tell them what your going to be blogging about, tell them what to expect next time they arrive.
So as always you need to consider your readers when answering these question, ask yourself, ‘Why would people come to this blog?’ ‘What do they want to see the next time the come?’

Make it interesting.

Do something different, add some personality and humor to it. You don’t want to sound like a robot that’s programed to say something generic.

Exceptions

Their are exceptions to everything, including your first blog post. If you do something that’s out of the ordinary but still goes along with your blog, such as this post, then go for it. You can talk about your self and your writers in your About Us page. In fact take a look at ours if you want to learn more about us.

What do you think should go into the first post?
Tell us in a comment.