Yes, I’d admit, I’m very comfortable with writing everyday. Writing doesn’t scare me. But I didn’t start like that. I started where many of you are. Not knowing what to write.

Today, after blogging for 2 years, I still have days which I wake up and I stare at my computer screen, not knowing what to write. That’s normal. Everybody has this.

But instead of thinking “Argh, I’m not good at this.”, I think “How can I get good at this?”

… and I came up with a plan and took action on that plan.

Well, plans do not work well all the time, but having a plan is better than not having one.

Here’s my plan – what I do for Blogopreneur.com

First Step – Get more information. Specifically, information that I can use.

Here is what I did.

#1. Read frequently updated blogs thru RSS

Today, I don’t even remember how many blogs there are in my Google reader subscriptions, but it is to a point where always see more than 50 unread items when I log in every day.

Reading other blogs in your industry give you insights in that industry, and keeps you updated about the news. It also gives you more content ideas.

Now don’t go now and add every single blog you come across to your RSS reader. Select. Cherry pick. Choose the good ones – the ones which you think give quality content.

Its also important that you regularly prune you subscription. If you wake up in the morning and you find over 1000+ unread items in your reader, you just might be setting yourself up for information overload.

Its easier to motivate yourself to clear 50 items, than 1000+ items. And 50 should be enough for you to come across one good idea.

#2. Subscribe to Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a great service by Google. Basically, you specify your search terms and create an alert. When Google finds new pages and blogs and news about that search term, it drops you an email… or you can subscribe to your alerts using RSS.

Again, 4 to 5 search terms will give you enough content to read. Don’t overload yourself.

#3. Twitter

I’ve been very reluctant to use my Twitter account as part of my online marketing strategy, but after I did, I think its a great addition.

Follow some people you think provide good content. You’ll be amazed at what people share on Twitter. Great stuff.

… and if you’ve not followed me yet, come join me in my Twittering adventure.

Second Step – Jot down my post ideas.

I don’t know if this relates to you, but for me, my ideas seem to come everytime I am on the train. So instead of just thinking about it, I jot them down on my PDA. (If you don’t have a PDA, use a notebook!)

What you want to jot down might include:

* The idea
* A headline that might attract your readers to read.
* Outline of how you are going to present the idea.

And of course, as you read good content on the web, bookmark the items you find useful. Del.icio.us is a great way to keep track of your bookmarks.

Not all that is jotted down needs to be used. So even if its just a thought which you don’t know how to expand on, jot it down anyway.

Third Step – Write.

When you write, look back at your ideas that you have jotted down. If you’ve been diligent enough to jot ideas everywhere you go, you’ll find a wealth of ideas which you can expand on.

How do you expand an idea into a blog post?

Here is one very useful way to do this. Just use the 1-2-3-4 approach.

Here’s how. Say you want to expand on the idea about “Travelling during the Christmas Holidays”

That’s your 1. With this, find 2 subtopics.

So for my example, I might think about “Where should I go this Christmas”, and “How to enjoy my trip”.

Then, for every subtopic, jot 3 points.

Again for my example, it’ll go like this. For “Where should I go this Christmas”, I might jot down “Hokkaido”, “Las Vegas”, and “Melbourne”. For “How to enjoy my trip.”, I will think of “Pack light”, “Be prepared for the environment”, “Plan your itinerary”.

Done. Now. You’ve got 6 points.

If that is enough for you to write about, stop here. But if you want to go further – work on every point and think of 3 to 4 subpoints.

So, my eventual writeup outline might go something like this:

“Travelling during the Christmas Holidays”

* Where should I go
o Japan, Hokkaido
+ Hokkaido regions
+ Go snowboarding
+ Eat nice sushi
+ Learn a bit of Japanese
o US, Las Vegas
+ Visit the casinos
+ Bring camera, take wonderful photos at night
+ Visit theme parks
o Australia, Melbourne
+ South, so it’ll be hot during Christmas
+ Go Phillip island see penguins
+ About Yarra river
+ Shopping – what to buy there
* How to enjoy my trip
o Pack light
+ Small bag, expandable
+ Must carry essentials
+ How to pack
+ Backpack or luggage bag?
o Prepare for environment
+ Check out temperature before going
+ Is food suitable
+ Christmas holidays – the different cultures
+ Where to get good travel clothes / winter wear
o Plan itinerary
+ How to plan your time well
+ What to look out for in Christmas
+ 3 websites to look for properly planned itinerary
+ Don’t pack attractions back to back if you want to relax

Well, this is just a quick brainstorm with my limited knowledge… and I’m sure if you are in the travel industry, you’d probably be able to think of a lot more.

But the point is – can you see how quickly one idea can be expanded into such a long outline using the 1-2-3-4 approach? If you’ve just written ONE sentence for each of the points, you would have come up with an outstanding article about travelling during Christmas.

Easy? Do it more often, it’ll get easier.

Action Items for this Issue

Step 1. Get yourself subscribed to at least 20 blogs in your industry, subscribe to 3 terms in Google Alerts, and start Twittering (and add me!)

Step 2. Prepare a piece of paper, PDA, notebook with you all the time, so you can jot down ideas as they come to mind.

Step 3. Think of one topic you might want to write today. Use the 1-2-3-4 approach and draft an outline now.

This list of things will probably take you just over an hour to do, but I’m sure after you have done this you will have a lot more confidence to write more and better!

Source: Blogspreneur

Absensi: AbsensiWajah.com

Paid Plugs- This form of monetization will make you lose your PR, but it is the easiest way for a noob to make any money in this biz. You don’t need traffic and you don’t need readers. All you need is some PR on your blog.

Payperpost- $4402.59 + 169 referrals($15 each) $2535.00 = $6937.59

Smorty- $832.74 + 52 referrals($5 each) $260 = $1092.74

Sponsoredreviews- $3341.87 + 113 blog referrals($10 each) $1130 + 8 advertiser referrals($25 each) $200 = $4671.87

Blogitive- $10.00

Bloggingads- $20.00

Socialspark- $68.49

Loudlaunch- $1443.98

Blogtoprofit- $25.00

Bloggerwave- $120.00

blogsvertise- $35.00

Money4blogs- $35.00

Affiliates- Affiliate marketing is not as easy as most people make it out to be. If you are a noob, you will find it to be pretty hard to get these commissions. It requires a lot of SEO and keyword strategies. You also need to play around with different ad networks and programs. Setting up multiple sites is a must.

Commission Junction- $5,933.77

RevResponse- $550.00

PepperJamNetwork- $75.00

PPC/Signup Bonus/referrals/misc I haven’t freed up enough time to do this but i plan to increase my earning from this soon enough.

Adbrite- $22.38

Widgetbucks- $25.00

Project Wonderful- $14.17

Misc- $229.43

Text Link Ads- $25.00

BloggerNoob Ads- If you are new to the game, you might think that getting private ads is easy. I see a whole bunch of noobies trying to sell $5 125×125 ads without any success. The reality is that this type of income is very hard to come by. You will need a lot of traffic and rank well in search engines to get people to pay you directly for ads on your blog.

Private ads- 18 + 60 + 35 + 225 + 40 + 275 + 520 + 365 + 775 + 565 + 615 + 410 = $3903.00

TOTAL- $25,237.42

After a year of blogging, i must confess that this isn’t for everybody. I have set up a lot of blogs for clients and friends. Out of all those people that i helped out, only a few are still updating their blogs. I taught them out to make a few bucks with their blogs, but it just isn’t worth it for them to continue. A lot of you will fall into this category. But, some of you will get hooked and will keep on pressing on. You guys are the ones that have what it takes to make money online. “Never give up! Never surrender!” (Galaxy Quest)

FYI. For some of the paid plugging income, i have included posts from my other blogs as well. Also, a lot of the referral income has not been collected yet. I also made close to $18,000.00 with my collection of other websites and blogs. So add that to the total above and i made over $42,000.00 during my year online. I spent a few thousand dollars on marketing and i invested more then half of my earning into other types of web sites. The moral of the story is that if you keep on trucking, you’ll make some nice cash. Remember to balance your time wisely and if you don’t like to read or write, don’t start a blog about blogging or a make money online blog. There are plenty of other types of websites that can make some nice cash for you.

Source: Blogspreneur

Absensi: AbsensiWajah.com

To be frank, today’s session is just an excuse to talk to you again We’ve come a looooong way since the first part of the course where we explored blogging, right from the basics. We’ve been through terminology, planning, installing WordPress, writing content, optimization, marketing, monetizing, and tweaking for human visitors.

Its a whole lot of things – I’d personally took days (and sleepless nights) to get those out… and I really hope it helped.

I’ll just open up and discuss some random unsettled topics today, some of which are tips which I am yet to share with you.

First, lets talk about the long tail.

The Long Tail

Back in 2006, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine published a book called “The Long Tail“. In this book, he put forward a concept of the new marketplace with a phenomenon as depicted in the graph below.

In his blog, he mentions:

The Long Tail, in a nutshell

The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

Blogs play a very major role in making the long tail work. Blogs are what Chris calls “the long tail producers”. Blogs are the current wave of user generated content, allowing anyone to become a publisher and content producer in 15 minutes!

Blogs are also “long tail filters” – they also help to filter information, bringing the best content to the reader, especially for those blogs with quality content – the bloggers obviously must have read at least 10 other posts or articles for each article they write.

So continue blogging – every quality blog is vital for the new economy. Your job as a blogger is to help your readers get the best content, to share with them the gist of what you know.

There is so much more about the concept of the Long Tail that only Chris would be able to share with you via the excellent book. You MUST get a copy.

Finding Your Personal Voice

As you start to post more entries to your blog, you will find that you will have a particular style of writing – everyone does. Don’t worry about it, even if you think that your style is “not professional enough”. Don’t force yourself to change your writing style. This blog is yours, and yours only – and ultimately, people want to see you as you are.

As you write more, you will write better. To start you don’t have to be good, but to be good, you have to start.

Creating New Blogs

I know, you have many topics you want to write about, and now that you know how to start a blog, you might want to set up 2, 5 or even 10 blogs, each targeting a different topic.

My advice for you would be to hold it – too many people get diversified too early in the show. Remember that maintaining a blog takes effort, and sometimes this effort can be substantial (especially during the startup period when you need to build up your blog quickly). Hold your horses in starting a new blog until you feel you are really ready to do so, when you are comfortable with your first one.

Then, as you create new blogs, create them one by one. Each successful blog is well planned and defines a good objective to achieve. Creating a blog with a vague objective is as good as not creating one at all.

Thank You!

Source: Blogspreneur

Absensi: AbsensiWajah.com