Written on August 15th, surf zone.at 09:08 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
b5media Seeking Business Bloggers
Just a quick announcement for those of you that are looking for an opportunity to blog as part of an established blog network - and get paid for doing it.
b5media is currently seeking business bloggers to join its new business channel.
We’re open to being pitched ideas for the channel but have a list of suggested topics that might get your juices flowing a little:
- Giving Back & Community Involvement
- Entrepreneurship
- Recruiting/Interviewing
- Venture Capital
- Taxes
- Small Business Advertising/Marketing
- Word of Mouth Marketing
- Press Releases & Business Writing
- Law
- Office space (Leasing, Real Estate, Scouting Property, etc.)
- Web Hosting
- Home Businesses
- Freelancers (Business of, getting clients, etc.)
- Business of Blogging/Blog Marketing
As Jeremy writes in his post calling for bloggers - we’re more than interested to hear your own ideas for business blogging topics also as it’s a large field with plenty of potential.
Jeremy’s written full details of who b5 is, how we operate, what we’re looking for and how to apply at b5’s home page.
Disclaimer - I’m one of the co-owners of b5 and enternetusers.net is part of the network.
Written on August 15th, surf zone.at 02:08 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Essential Books for Bloggers - Version II
As submission to this week’s Writing Project I’ve just updated a list that I first posted a few days ago - my Essential Books for Bloggers list.
The list is now categorized and has the additional books that readers have submitted. There are a total of 65 books in the list. I’ve not read them all but respect those that suggested them and have just ordered a few of the newer ones to me.
I hope you find the list of books for bloggers helpful.
Written on August 14th, surf zone.at 07:08 pm by David Shawver city of Stanton
Lists - Group Writing Project
Update: Submissions are now closed on this project. See the full list of submissions here.
It’s time for another enternetusers Group Writing Project - and this time we’ve got prizes worth around $1250 USD (see below for details)!
The Topic
This week’s topic is ‘LISTS’ - something regular readers will know that I’m rather fond of.
Your task is to write a ‘list post’ (new posts please, not previously posted ones if possible) - or a post that is largely some type of list. It might be a ‘top ten’ type list, a ‘how to’ type list, a ‘my favorite…’ type list - whatever you like. I’ve chosen this topic because it’s adaptable to most topics (I’m looking forward to seeing the variety of types of lists that are submitted).
Once you’ve written your list simply follow the process for participating that I’ve outlined below.
The Prizes
This week’s group writing project is proudly sponsored by the following companies and individuals. Five random participants (it’s not a competition) in this week’s project will receive one of the following gifts (’listed’ here in no particular order):
- Earners Forum have kindly donated a new Dell PC and LCD monitor - to the value of $500. Earners Forum is a great place for discussions around all kinds of topics of earning money online. Thanks to Lee Dodd for this donation.
- URLTrends have kindly donated a Premium upgraded account worth $90 that will help them track their search engine ranking over time. Thanks to Joel Strellner for this donation.
- The Gold Pages Directory has donated $500 in digital cash that can be spent on products and services or withdrawn to a prepaid ATM card and used as cash. The Gold Pages Directory is the largest online currency/digital gold directory on the web and is now three years old. Thanks to Mark Herpel for this donation.
- The Umdum.com Web Directory have donated a Sinic Eye and Brain Massager (just what every enternetusers needs). They’ve also kindly offered every participant in this week’s group writing project a free listing in their directory. Thanks to Loren Baker for this donation.
- Blake Schwendiman has donated a $100 gift voucher from Amazon to be used in any way that they see fit. Thanks Blake!
Thanks also to those others who offered to sponsor this week. Hopefully if this week goes well we’ll be able to do this again.
How To Participate
Here’s how to participate and put yourself in the running for a gift (please note - one entry per person).
1. Write a list post
- Be as creative as you’d like - take it in any direction you want - it can be a short list, long list, funny list, rant-like list…..etc
- Give your post a good title. Once all our lists are listed it’ll only be your title that sets it apart.
- Feel free to write your post in your own first language - I’ve previously included a number of non-english posts and am excited by the prospect of making this a multi-lingual project.
- Consider putting a link back to this post on your post so that your readers know you’re participating. You don’t have to do this - but it’d be appreaciated to help grow the project.
2. Let me Know about your post
- Once you’ve posted your list post let me know about it by sending me an email via my contact form.
- Make sure you include your name (as you want it to appear in my list), your post title and the URL to your post (not just to your blog’s front page).
- Submissions must be received by me the the end of Thursday 17 August (as long as it’s still Thursday where you send it from I’ll accept it). If they come in after Thursday they won’t be included in the list and will not be in the running for the gifts.
3. I will post 2 links to your post
- In the day or two after you let me know about your post I’ll post a link to it in two places. Firstly there will be a daily (ish) list of the submissions from the last 24 hours. Secondly there will be a central list of all submissions for the project so we can see everything on one page.
- I’ll post my final list of submissions on Friday and will announce those who receive the gifts then.
4. Surf Surf Surf
- This is where you take over. Surf the submissions received. Leave comments, make connections with other enternetusers readers and enjoy reading what others have to say.
5. Link Link Link
- There is no formal ‘judging’ as this is not a competition. Instead - I encourage you to surf through the submissions at the end of the week and announce your own winners on your own blog. Name a top 5 or so and share the link love.
- Probably the best part of the last group project was the amount of inter-linking I see happening between participating bloggers as a result of their posts. It’s obvious that people found new blogs through it and that the benefits of participating was way beyond getting a link from me but flowed on to a lot of new connections and links between other bloggers.
Written on August 14th, surf zone.at 04:08 pm by David Shawver city of Stanton
New Blog - LifeDev
Today I came across a new blog (new to me) that caught my attention - LifeDev. I thought I’d share a few of their latest posts which got my attention and could be helpful for bloggers:
- 7 Idea Dumping Tips (How to Mangage Diarrhea of the Brain)
- What the Frontpage of Reddit Does to a New blog in 24 hours
- Get Productive (And Let Your Mind Wander)
- Never Check Your Email First or Last
All in all - useful posts, nice design, intriguing titles and a blog to add to the RSS feed.
Written on August 14th, surf zone.at 02:08 pm by David Shawver city of Stanton
Windows Live Writer - Have your Say
Microsoft has just announced Windows Live Writer today (downloadable from here if you’re a PC user).
I’m a Mac guy so it’s not something I can give you any recommendations on but it’s a blogging tool (in a similar class to other desktop blog editors) with most of the features that I’ve seen in other editor including WYSIWYG authoring, photo publishing, map publishing etc. It’s compatible with most main blogging platforms. Keep in mind it’s still in beta.
I’m hearing from a number of people that it’s quite good but until they cater for Mac users I’ll have to take others word for it.
If you’ve tried it - I’d love you to give us a mini review in comments below.
Read more about Live Writer at:
- Liveside - a podcast interview with J.J. Alaire about Live Writer
- Techcrunch - announcement post with a few first impression reviews from commenters
- GigaOm - Om’s a fan
- Rick Segal - first impressions
- Paul Kedrosky - calls it eye candy
- Mark Evans - first impressions are positive and says Qumana should be concerned
- Duncan Riley - at it’s beta stage it’s not going to kill other blog editors but it does have potential.
- Elliot Back - says it works and looks pretty good (although has ‘lots of strange bugs, some editor weirdness, no copy paste, unpolished interface etc and each blog post opens in a new window).
- Dave Winer - thinks its great that Microsoft is making it - but points out it’s taken a long time.
Written on August 12th, surf zone.at 03:08 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Chitika Shoplinc Review
Chitika have just gone public with a new feature - Shoplincs - a CPC (cost per click) branded shop that you can host on your own domain and attatch to your blog/site.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of a small (very small from what I can tell) beta test of ShopLinc and now that it’s public can tell you a little about it.
In effect what ShopLinc gives you is a shop for your blog where you are paid on a CPC basis (the same as eMiniMalls). Take a tour of shoplinc here.
The shop I’ve been testing is a Digital Camera Shop attached to my digital camera blog. You’ll see when going to it that it is customizable so as to integrate it to the rest of your blog (I’ve not done a brilliant job of this yet due to lack of time) and that you can have it on your own domain to further integrate it.
The four products featured on the front page of a shoplinc blog (in a multi-product eMiniMall and as separate products) are directly tied to the products you are writing about on your blog as they are driven via your RSS feed. This is a new approach that I’ve not seen anyone else doing to this point and ensures that people heading over to your shoplinc shop are seeing products that relate directly to the content you’re writing about (of course this assumes that your RSS feed is product specific).
Also on the front page of your shop are the last three recent posts from your RSS feed as well as a categories section that has links into other sections of the shoplinc. Categories include gadgets like Camcorders, Cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 Players and Printers but also include other products including Health and Beauty, Home and Garden and Clothing and Accessories).
Topping and tailing the central ’shop section’ are customizable areas (a header and footer) in which you can put anything you like including banners back to your blog (as I currently have), other advertising (you can run chitika eMiniMalls here, AdSense ads etc) or you can leave them blank.
There is also a ’search’ tool that lets visitors to your shoplinc search for products (from my initial analysis this seems to be being used quite a bit).
When visitors click on a product they are taken to a product page (here’s one for the new Sony Alpha A100 DSLR) which contains a number of elements. Firstly there is an eMiniMall unit, under that are a number of offers from different dealers offering the camera (a click on these is what earns you money) and to the left of this shopping area is a section for ‘research’ - firstly any related items on the product from your own blog (driving traffic back to your blog) and secondly any other research from other parts of the web.
To this point Shoplincs are not available to everyone - but there is talk on their blog of them opening up applications wider.
First Impressions
Chitika’s Shoplinc is still a relatively new product from Chitika and even in the past couple of weeks it’s changed a bit. I would think that it’ll continue to mature as a product over the coming months (and it should).
Earnings - I’m not sure at how much detail I can speak about what it’s earned me so far but I will say that it’s been a worthwhile addition to my blog. Three pages are tracked in Chitika’s statistics for Shoplinc, the front page, product pages and search results pages. Each page converts quite differently in terms of CTR and eCPM but overall it does quite well on an overall eCPM basis.
In fact in terms of eCPM (earnings per 1000 impressions) they do as well as any page I’ve ever had (if not better).
The challenge of course is getting traffic to the product pages. While they earn great money for every 1000 visitors you get there it’s not always easy driving traffic.
What I like
The set up - it was painless and just involved picking a template (there are three to choose from at this point), giving my server guy some instructions on where to point pages to and adding some headers.
Product pages are linkable - it’s possible to drive traffic to individual product pages directly. This is good for a number of reason but mainly because you can bypass the non converting front page by linking to specific product pages.
What I don’t like
Non Earning Pages - I don’t like that the front page and search pages have considerably lower earning power than product pages (note they have improved this since I started testing but they are still not converting as high as other pages). The front page in particular seems like a wasted opportunity as it will naturally have more traffic than any other page on the shop. While I’m happy that a lot of people do seem to find their way to product pages I’d love to see them add some way of earning income to the front and search pages also.
Research from the Web Section - I don’t particularly like that they link to other relevant pages from around the web on individual product pages. This is for two reasons - firstly it drives traffic away from both the shop and my blog (to other sites). Secondly, some of the results it’s come up with are junky and other shops. I’m not sure how they get them but today I followed a few of these links and some were spam blogs and other crappy sites - others were my direct competitors. I’d rather this section disappeared or at least was optional.
What I’m not sure if I like yet
Auditing - I’m yet to see an audit of shoplinc yet. Chitika audit once a month and I’ll reserve judgement on whether I’m totally happy with it until I see a month or two’s full figures.
Impact upon other ads - I’ve noticed a small drop off in earnings for other ads (most noticeably Chitika’s eMiniMalls and my AdSense earnings) on the blog. I guess this is largely because I’ve given readers another option to click on the blog which means that where as X% used to click on other ads that there are a slightly lower % clicking now as some are going to the shop instead. Time will tell whether it’d worth losing this revenue as I see what the shoplinc brings in.
Research from the Expert Section - the section on product pages that links back to relevant posts on my own blog has mixed feelings for me. On one hand it drives traffic back to my blog and gives readers some relevant content. On the other hand it sends people away from a money making page. In a similar way I’m undecided about having navigational links at the top of my page that link back to the blog.
RSS Feed Driving Products - I like the idea of my feed driving the featured products on the front page in principle - but in reality it can have some problems, especially when I’m not writing about products specifically. On my digital camera blog 90% of my posts are on products so it works well - but in some instances I will write a ‘tip’ or will write news that isn’t about a camera. In these cases the shoplinc makes a best guess and quite often serves something that isn’t really the type of product I’d want to have featured on my front page. This has meant I’ve been a little more aware of how and what I’m writing and what impact that will have upon my shop. I can see that bloggers with less product specific niches will be frustrated by this.
What happens when everyone can have one? - I am a little scared of what will happen when and if Chitika lets everyone have a shoplinc shop attached to their blog or site. The potential for them to be used by spammers to drive traffic to worries me a little and I really hope that Chitika keep this limited to a smaller number of reputable publishers.
Written on August 12th, surf zone.at 12:08 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Essential Books for Bloggers
The following post is a list of books that would be helpful for bloggers - particularly those wishing to make a business from their blogging activities. It has been compiled both from my own suggestions as well as those of a number of other bloggers (see the bottom of the list for those who helped).
When I called for suggestions for books I said that they don’t have to be blogging specific (although they can be) but rather they should be books that help bloggers to improve any aspect of their blogging. As a result the topics in the list are quite wide and cover a range of topics including marketing, creative thinking, web development, other business topics as well as a few blog specific books. I’ve tried to put them in some sort of categories - however I don’t know all of them so please forgive me if my categories are not quite right. All books are linked to Amazon with affiliate links
Blogging
- Blog Marketing
- Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
- The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right
- Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging
- Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care
- Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance))
- Money For Content and Your Clicks For Free: Turning Web Sites, Blogs, and Podcasts Into Cash
Copy Writing
- Zen in the Art of Writing
- Write It Right: The Ground Rules for Self-Editing Like the Pros
- 1000 Most Important Words
- Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing
- On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (On Writing Well)
- Rules for Writers
- Choose the Right Word: Second Edition
- Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America’s Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs
- Breakthrough Advertising: How to Write Ads That Shatter Traditions and Sales Records
- The Copywriter’s Handbook, Third Edition: A Step-By-Step Guide To Writing Copy That Sells. Revised and Expanded
- Hot Text: Web Writing that Works
- Advertising Secrets of the Written Word
- Tested Advertising Methods
- Ogilvy on Advertising
- The Story Factor
Business
- The Art of War: The oldest military treatise in the world
- Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service
- Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
- The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
- The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
- The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual
- Power of An Hour: Business and Life Mastery in One Hour A Week
- An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths
Marketing
- All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
- The Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness
- Life After the 30-Second Spot: Energize Your Brand With a Bold Mix of Alternatives to Traditional Advertising
- Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands
- Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
- Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices
- Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
- Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing
- Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich
Creative Thinking
- Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas
- Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step (Perennial Library)
- Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
- Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition)
- A Technique for Producing Ideas (Advertising Age Classics Library)
- Six Thinking Hats
Miscellaneous
- The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information
- That’s Not What I Meant!
- The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
- The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress
- Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
- The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
- A Rulebook for Arguments
- Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Writing with Readings (2nd Edition)
- The Art of Looking Sideways
- Communities Dominate Brands
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition)
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
- Syndicating Web Sites with RSS Feeds For Dummies
- Join Me!
- How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built
- Rivers of Revenue: What to Do When the Money Stops Flowing
- The 80/20 Principle
- The Wisdom of Crowds
- The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense
- Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program
Thanks to Anil, Arieanna, Wayne, Mike, Richard, Brem, vijayendra, Eric, Money Matador, Mike, Martin, Cat Clair, The Story Factor“>Brian, John Ellen and Stuart who I made suggestions for this list.
Written on August 11th, surf zone.at 10:08 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
AdSense Explain A/B Testing
The Official AdSense blog has posted a short tutorial on how to implement an A/B Test with your AdSense ads.
An A/B test sets up two different types of AdSense ads that rotate on your page in different configurations so that you can test which one works best for your site.
For example you could set it to track how two different color schemes perform in the one ad position or how different sized ad units do.
The first thing to do when setting up such a test is to set up two channels to track your results. Then use the javascript code below to rotate the ads.
Here’s the javascript code that they suggest you can use to run an A/B Test with your AdSense:
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
//your first ad unit code goes here
} else {
//your second ad unit code goes here
}
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”></script>
Replace “//your first ad unit goes here” with your ad code inside the first set of <script></script> tags.
It’s an experiment that is well worthwhile and it’s nice to see AdSense are making it possible. I’m sure however that there would be a more automated way to do it. For example they do allow publishers to rotate up to four color schemes in their ads at present - it’d be great if we could assign a different channel code to each color scheme to track it - in effect this could be a similar test.
Written on August 11th, surf zone.at 03:08 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Get a Real Blog - Instructional Videos Review
I get a lot of emails from PreBloggers and NewBloggers who want to set up a WordPress Blog on their own domain and hosting but don’t know how to do it. It’s a common question and one I’ve been looking for resources on to point people to.
Over the last few days I’ve been watching a series of blogs by Jon Symons called RealBlogVideos (aff) that he’s put together to help new WordPress.org users set up their blogs - I suspect quite a few readers will find them useful (note: not everyone will - so read on and I’ll tell you who they’re for and who they are not for).
Jon makes his living from blogging on blogs like Art of Money and is a regular here at enternetusers.
The videos cost $15 (US) to buy but for that you get 5 main videos and 3 bonus ones (a total of 162 minutes of instruction).
The main videos are on :
- Find Keywords for Your Topic & Domain Name Research
- Register a Domain Name
- Sign up for and Configure a Hosting Account
- Install a Wordpress Blog, Add a Theme and Do the First Post
- Configure Your Blog for Security & Do a Backup
Bonus Videos
- Blogging Copy & Paste Tip
- How To Install Wordpress Manually
- How To Install Wordpress On Dreamhost
What are the videos like?
You can see from Jon’s sales page a sample of one of the videos that will give you an idea of what you’ll be buying. Here’s a few comments:
- Production Quality - the production of these videos is not super high. There were a number of times I wished Jon had done some more editing but other times where I appreciated the rawness of them as it showed me how a real person’s workflow is.
- Usability - Jon is pretty good at putting technical things into a language that most people will be able to follow.
- Usefulness - depending upon your level of expertise (see below) - these videos are quite helpful and useful on the topics you see above. If I’d been given these videos two years ago I would have lapped them up as I’m a visual person and find reading these types of more technical instructions more difficult to follow. Seeing someone else do it is how I learn best.
- Value for Money - I think $15 for two and a half hours of tuition is worthwhile. If you don’t agree once you’ve seen them Jon does offer a 100% guarantee.
So who are these videos for?
I’ve mentioned above that they are not for everyone but that they will be helpful for some readers.
New bloggers who have never had a blog will find them useful as will bloggers who have been using a hosted blog service (like Blogger.com, TypePad, WordPress.com) who want to get their own domain and hosting to give themselves complete control over their blogs.
Who are they Not for?
Bloggers who are confident at setting up a WP blog, registering for a domain, organizing hosting etc will not learn a lot from these videos. Having said this - I actually did learn a few things about it even though I’d set up a few WP blogs now (keep in mind that the technical side of blogging is not my strength).
These are not advanced videos and they don’t coontain unique or exclusive information (it’s all floating around the web already in different forms) but they are helpful if you’re at the beginning of your blogging journey. If you’re at that point you can buy them via RealBlogVideos.
Written on August 11th, surf zone.at 12:08 am by David Shawver city of Stanton
Challenges Facing Young and Older Blogs
It struck me today as I sifted through a variety of questions from readers that the age of a blog brings with it a different set of challenges to their bloggers.
Bloggers with young blogs tends to ask one set of questions and bloggers with older blogs have their own set of ‘issues’ that they are tackling.
So what are the challenges that old and young blogs face? Here’s a few that come to mind - feel free to add your own in comments:
Challenges facing Younger Blogs
- Lack of Readers - one of the main reasons why so many new blogs fail is that no one seems to be reading. Developing a loyal readership and establishing a search engine presence takes a longer amount of time than many bloggers are willing to wait.
- Establishing a Reputation - some blogging niches can be quite snobbish and hard to break into. Becoming a respected and valued part of a niche (and getting linked to by others) can take time as you prove your worth.
- Time Management - many bloggers underestimate how much time and energy getting a new blog up off the ground can take.
- Defining a Topic or Niche - it can take months to get a feel for a niche and to find your place within it.
- Finding Post Ideas - after a few weeks (or months) of blogging many bloggers hit a brick wall with how to sustain it because they run out of ideas. Building up a good list of sources for stories and a way of creating fresh stories can take time.
- Blog Addiction - many new bloggers become quite obsessed with blogging and struggle with it becoming a little addicting (to the point where the rest of life suffers).
- Establishing a Posting Rhythm - finding an appropriate posting frequency and rhythm for a blog can take time as you work out you blogging style and how your readers are interacting with what you do.
- SEO and Getting Indexed by Search Engines - there is a perception among many new bloggers that all you have to do is write a post and you’ll be picked up and ranked highly in Google and other search engines. The reality is that it can take months and can be a very frustrating process.
Challenges facing Older Blogs
- Managing Large Archives - the challenge of helping people to find the Gold in your Archives is one that becomes more difficult as your archives become bigger.
- Staying Motivated - blogging daily about a topic for a long period of time can be hard to maintain.
- Battling Bloggers Block - a challenge for young and old blogs but especially hard after longer periods of time.
- Finding Fresh Post topics to Blog About - getting over the fact that you’ve written about an aspect of your niche before can be difficult however it’s something you’ll have to do in most niches.
- Managing Trolls and Disillusioned Readers - the longer you blog the more chance there will be that you’ve peeved someone off. This will result in more trolls in your comments, increasing amounts of other bloggers having a go at you etc.
- Comment Management - comment moderation, spam, interacting with readers - all this takes time and the older your blog is the more posts you’ve got to manage.
- Dealing with Copycat Blogs - ranging from competitors through to plagiarists - it can be quite tiring to deal with.
- Setting Priorities - some bloggers find that the longer they blog in a niche, the more opportunities open up for them to do other things. Offers might come in for taking on other projects and partnerships, new ideas for extensions to blogs might emerge etc. Discerning which opportunities to take and which to leave can be a real challenge and the whole process can be quite distracting.
- Disillusionment with a Niche - I’ve noticed a number of longer term bloggers in different niches becoming quite disillusioned with the niche itself. Perhaps it’s partly blogger burnout (I know I get cranky just before a holiday) or perhaps its an inability to adapt with the changes happening in a niche as it develops.