Entries Tagged 'blogs' ↓

How Do you Spell school Again?

It is happened many times that when people correct errors, they create additional errors. One thinks of Winston Churchill’s famous

“That is the kind of English, up with which I will not put”

Or George W. Bush

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”

Amusingly, Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics, pointed out an error in the Economist. He argued the Economist had unwittingly dropped an r from pastries. He pointed out that the Economist had misspelt it pasties. He blogged about it here

Unfortunately, for Stephen, he didn’t realise there is actually a foodstuff called Cornish pasties; so the Economist was right and he had a bit of egg on his face. Just to finish off the joke, the Economist sent him a chicken and vegetable pasty through the post. - Pasties, Pasties everywhere

I have seen many people point out errors, only to make more errors themselves. It’s certainly happened to me; although, conveniently I can’t remember the specific examples.

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

- Oscar Wilde

I have long wanted to work from home, but, having spent the past couple of weeks working from home, I realise their are quite a few difficulties as well as the undoubted benefits. Whilst many would like the idea of working from home; it is worth being aware of the potential drawbacks.

No Structure.

Working for yourself gives a tremendous freedom; you can choose the hours of when and indeed if you work. There is no 9 to 5. But, this means you need to be quite disciplined in setting aside time to concentrate on work.

No Finish Time.

If you work in an office, you at least know, when your work day is over. But, working from home means that you can be working until late at night. Sometimes, it is important to set a time to completely switch off and not touch any more work.

Mixing Work And Pleasure.

Sometimes your not sure whether your working or just pursuing a hobby. In a way this is a great thing. But, it means your work can sometimes lack focus. For example, I have a blog on cycling; but, I’m not sure how productive it is to watch highlights of the Tour. True, I could blog about it, but, it is not really effective work. Similarly, I spent a lot of time looking at photos from a cycling trip. I did get a blog post out of it but, it took a long time.

Continue reading →

Since entering the RSS competition at Daily Blog Tips, I have been trying a few strategies to get more subscribers to my Economics Blog. This is what I have been doing so far:

Blog Carnival.

I have set up a Carnival of the Economists, encouraging people to submit articles on economics. The hope is that people up submit to carnivals will be interested in subscribing. I think it is also important to make the most of a blog carnival, e.g. encouraging submitters to subscribe.

Posting

Frequent posting, once or twice a day. I could post more, but, I doubt this would help. There is always a danger of putting people off through overposting.

Commenting on Top Blogs.

I found a list of the top 100 economic blogs. I went through the blogs, and subscribed to those who allow comments with links to your homepage. I have been leaving thoughtful comments, in the hope some will click through and subscribe. The traffic from this has been low, but, hopefully it is good quality traffic.

Things Which would be good to Do

• Write Guest Posts on Popular Blogs. Unfortunately, most of the top economic blogs aren’t interested in accepting guest posts; it’s different to the self improvement and blogging niche. Continue reading →

Recently, I have been helping a few people start blogging, who previously didn’t have any experience.

The first thing I realised is that it is easy to forget how much knowledge which may seem ‘obvious’ to an experienced blogger, is actually a complete mystery to the newcomer.

There is also a lack of information at the absolute basics of blogging, because we take certain things for granted.

First Steps in Blogging

What is a Blog?

A blog is a way of generating a website; it is a way of generating online content. A blog can be many things, but usually it is updated on a fairly regular basis. Netwriting is a blog. You can look at my other blogs here

What Do I need to be able to Blog?

1. Buy a domain name. If you look at the top of the screen, you will see the domain name of this blog is www.netwriting.co.uk/

2. You need to host your blog with a hosting company. You will need to sign upto a hosting company. I strongly recommend choosing a hosting company which offer one click install (i.e. easy) for a blog software. I Recommend - Hostican prices range from $6 a month to $11 a month.

3. Linking Domain Name to Hosting Company.

It is easier if you buy a domain name, with your hosting company. But, there can be reasons to buy it separately. If you buy a domain name from a separate company you need to point the nameservers from the domain company to the hosting company. e.g. ns1.hostican.com. This effectively links the domain name with your hosting account so that the domain name will work on your hosting company.

By the way, it can take time for the domain name to ‘propagate’ and become active.

4. Install a Blog

Once you have a website such as www.netwriting.co.uk, you can install a blog. The blog is a piece of software which makes it easy to add content. Note, you don’t need to buy or download any software, it is hosted online.

I recommend Wordpress. If you goto your control panel. You will see a function called ‘Fantastico’. This is because it is fantastic in saving time and effort. Then you choose to install wordpress. You can install at /blog or install at the root just leave / blank. It doesn’t matter too much, whether you install at /blog like www.cyclinginfo.co.uk/blog. or at the ‘root’ like netwriting.co.uk/

Continue reading →

I have entered Daily Blog tips competition for increasing RSS subscribers.

I decided to choose my economics blog - economics help.

I may regret choosing that blog because:

• It’s my only blog on blogger (inferior to wordpress)
• June / July has seen a significant dip in traffic due to the end of the academic year.
• I may have had more success with a niche on blogging. People interested in economics do not necessarily know what RSS are

However, the strengths of the blog include:

• Reasonable traffic from Google already.
• I will have no problem writing articles on economics.

My motivation for entering the competition is not to win the money (I don’t expect to do that). I predict the winners will be a blog with already over 500 subscribers.

However, if I can increase my subscriber base by 50 in a month, I will be happy. More subscribers means hopefully more commentators and more links. A few more links to the site would help alot.

I’ll let you know how I get on. It’s good to have a challenge now that I am working full time as a blogger.

By the way, if you fancy subscribing to a fascinating blog about Economics, I’d be grateful…

For the next 3 months I will be ‘working’ as a full time blogger. As a teacher, my term doesn’t start until mid September, so I will be spending the summer living the lifestyle of a ‘problogger’.

Usually, in the summer, I take on an onerous job of marking exam papers. But, thanks to the income I earn from blogging, I have been able to retire from marking.

These are some of My early Observations from Working as A Full time Blogger.

I rarely do a full days work.

On average I spend about 5-6 hours working on my websites. Working from home gives more leisure time, like an hour lunch time to watch an episode of Sherlock Holmes and spending several hours cycling. Therefore, even living as a ‘full time blogger’ I haven’t been doing a huge amount more than when I was working part time.

I enjoy the Work

This is the best aspect of blogging, generally, you are writing on topics that interest you. You can choose your topics and work to your own schedule. Whilst flexible time certainly as its challenges, it definitely has clear advantages that a strict 9-5 job can never give.

50% of My Work is Offline

One of my main focuses for this summer is to write more, increase the number of pages and keep 5 blogs going at the same time. This requires a lot of writing; therefore, I spend alot of time, writing in cafes providing the basic content, which then takes the rest of the day.

Projects.

I have set a few mini projects to give a structure to the full time job opportunities.

• Write an Economics Dictionary of upto 1,000 entry
• Target increase in RSS subscribers on certain blogs. This includes taking part in a blogging competition to increase RSS subscribers.

I think as a full time blogger it is important to set challenges and think big, growing blogs in a new direction. Continue reading →

As a blogger, one of the main tasks is writing. Finding time to write is one of the main challenges bloggers face. If you can’t find or create the necessary time, your blogs will lose impetus.

These are some tips I employ to increase the productivity of my writing.

Batch Writing

Writing requires a certain concentration and mental space. It’s not something you can dip into for the odd 10-15 minutes. It is important to give yourself a decent time period to get into the writing groove. Once you have started writing, it is best to maximise the writing environment and keep going. When writing blog posts, I will often write 2-6 posts at the same time. Often once you have writen one post, you get ideas for a second; your brain becomes attuned to the concept of writing.

Clarity and Simplicity.

For writing to be effective, you need to have a clear mind and clear schedule. The more distractions you can remove the better. For example, online access is one potential distraction, especially, if you have your email notifier open. Similarly I try to keep my writing desk free of distractions. Alternatively, I will go to a cafe, where there is little else to do apart from drink coffee and write. Continue reading →

I was inspired to write this post, by reading Probloggers entry (full time income, part time Blogging). Problogger is one of the few blogs on blogging that I read.

My Situation

I’m supposed to work as a teacher, teaching economics 30 hours a week. Sometimes, I work less because my students don’t turn up. If they don’t turn up, I used to waste my time wandering around Oxford. But, a couple of years ago I discovered blogging and realised I could be actually earning money from blogging, rather than just sitting around aimlessly. More about myself on the about page

How I got Interested in Blogging.

I became interested in building websites in 2003. I had no idea of making money from websites; in fact I probably disliked and looked down on the idea. My first website was Poetseers.org - a non profit making site on poetry. It gets upto 16,000 unique visitors a day. It was here that I learnt how to gain traffic to a site. Then I thought, if I can get traffic to a poetry website, why not get traffic to a site on Mortgages and make loads of money?

To be honest, I didn’t expect much. I thought, there are already lots of sites on Mortgages and I’m probably too late. (It’s really funny that at the birth of the internet, people somehow think they are too late to start a blog! - What about the people who will be starting sites in 50 years time?)

Early Encouragement.

After about 6 months of blogging for income, I finally made the first $100 from Google adsense. (Notice how long it took to get my first $100 - that’s a really poor hourly return.) But, I wasn’t thinking of the hourly rate. I was just enjoying blogging. Then after a few more months, things started to take off - I was earning $300 a month. Then I had this thought. If 2,000 visitors a day brings me $3 a day. Then all I need to do is to get 20,000 visitors and then I should get $30 a day. All I needed to do was to create more pages and more blogs!

Multiple Blogging

Without really thinking of a long term strategy I began to start new blogs on: economics (I’m an economics teacher, and I actually had lots of revision notes I could put straight onto a site), cycling, Gardening, Blogging, House prices, Housing Market, How To grow potatoes (yes, I really have a blog on how to grow potatoes), Biographies of people, Remortgage quotes. Somehow I ended up with 15 blogs. See my other blogs.

To be honest, there are only 5-6 which make any significant money. Quite a few I have allowed to quietly die. But, I do enjoy having multiple blogs. When I get tired of writing about mortgages and finance (which is quite quickly) I will write some posts about cycling (which I enjoy much more because it’s my hobby). My gardening blog makes a bit of money, but, I mainly do it because it’s an outlet for my amateur photography.

Continue reading →

On some of my blogs I have been successful in increasing RSS subscribers; others have proved a little more difficult. These are the things that I have learnt which really help increase RSS subscribers.
Don’t Give Up

The first 100 are the hardest. Therefore, don’t expect it to be easy. Once you reach a certain tipping point, the number of subscribers will increase with less effort.

Focus

When people subscribe they want to know what to expect. If you have a mixed blog, it will increase the chance of people unsubscribing. Poem of the Day is pretty self explanatory. Every day, one poem. It’s a very simple formula and an effective strategy for encouraging subscription.

Quantity over Quality.

On our self improvement blog, the average posting schedule is 2-3 times a week. That’s not a huge amount, but, we try to make each post worthwhile. We aim for bookmarkable content, rather than quantity. People are happy to subscribe when they know their RSS feeds are not going to be filled with ‘blog filler’

Guest Posting

I have written a series of guest posts for various blogs. This helps create a steady stream of traffic. The traffic is also highly targeted, they tend to be people who know what RSS is and therefore, are more likely to subscribe. I have only written one guest post for Netwriting, but, it did lead to an increase in subscribers.

Continue reading →

There is an interesting thread on Freakonomics about People’s worst email mistakes.

Actually, it’s pretty gruesome reading. Some of the common mistakes come from:

• Replying all rather than replying to an individual.
• Using Auto complete for recipient. e.g. you want to write to steve_myboyfriend but autofill fills in steve_myboss.

It is also worth pointing out that:

• Email is not secure. You should feel like you are sending a postcard. It could be read by anyone.
• There is a lot to be said for using phone / letter for more important discussions.

At least there was one that made me laugh:

“I accidentally e-mailed a copy of university final exam to all of my students the night before the exam. Fortunately, they didn’t mind.” — Posted by Kara