Or something along those lines.

Well, despite my best efforts, I’m still alive, so I must be getting enough comments, right? No, not really. Look through these pages and you’ll see that I maybe garner 1-3 comments in a post.

Most of my comments come in the form of tweets. On twitter, my link goes out, and me readers and I spend a few minutes discussing the post. It’s very interactive, and since I have Tweetdeck open all day, I don’t have to log in and out to check them.

Comments within the posts, on the other hand, pop up in my email at the most inopportune times, like when I’m about to hop on the subway or I’ve just shut the computer down for the night. So it will take me a while to approve it, and even longer to respond, if it’s something I can respond to at all.

Dee Barizo over at Performancing put up a post yesterday about how to get more comments. Her post includes a few tips to drive the right kind of traffic and spark the right kind of conversation in order to receive the most comments.

For me, I’m not fussed either way. I’m getting my needy personality catered to over on Twitter. But what about you? Do you thrive on comments?

You can either leave a comment here, or if you prefer, I’ll be over on Twitter.

CAUTION: I’m very no-holds-barred, no-filter on Twitter. Not for the faint of heart.

Glen, the 12-year-old who runs ViperChill, wrote an excellent post about… well, lots of stuff, actually. Pretty insightful for a kid whose voice hasn’t cracked yet. (ok, he’s not 12 – but he ain’t much older!)

Basically, what it all comes down to is “Do you have the balls to be remarkable?”

Yahoo! played it safe with their portal, and then Google came along with their simple search interface. MySpace played it safe and stopped innovating, and then Facebook stole the social network crown. Newspapers played it safe and now most of them are struggling to find leverage online.

Playing it safe is easy. But it’s also boring and predictable. Taking risks might (probably not) alienate your potential audience, but that’s fine. You will build an audience who loves whatever it is you’re doing differently.

Either pour yourself a glass of wine and settle in to read the whole post, or get to work 15 minutes early tomorrow to read it over coffee. Whatever you choose, go read it.

Thanks to Rizzn at SiliconAngle for sharing.

Five Simple Ways to Increase the Reach of Your Blog

I love the points about social media and commenting, but I disagree with article marketing. I tried it, and it didn’t work for me. That said, I know there are a great many niche bloggers who have built up a great deal of traffic and credibility with article marketing. Perhaps I’m not niche-y enough.

10 Quick Tips for Concise & Compelling Writing

The point about using short sentences is important. I read way more articles than I actually write, and short sentences and bullet points are appreciated. Reading from the web isn’t the same as reading from a book or magazine, and web writers should recognize that large blocks of text or run-on sentences can be discouraging to the reader.

Ok, back to the grindstone. Later!

Or, you know, a thousand bucks and some increased traffic.

IT World Canada is hosting a contest called Blogging Idol, which is open to all Canadian bloggers. Check out the info:

Starting in mid-May, we’ll be asking would-be bloggers to write posts on our site, blogs.itworldcanada.com, on a weekly topic determined by our editors. We’ll have special guests critique the posts in the comments area, and readers will choose their favourites using the ratings function.
IT World Canada is the information resource of choice for Canadian IT professionals. For more than 25 years, the Toronto-based company has been building relationships with Canada’s IT professionals through leading publications including: CIO Canada, Network World Canada, ComputerWorld Canada, CIO Government Review, DI Informatique and CDN, as well as the Web sites www.itworldcanada.com and  itbusiness.ca

Clearly this is most suited to tech bloggers, but theoretically anyone with the ability to write about IT can enter. Top prize is $1,000, and all runners-up get gift certificates.

Good luck!

Whenever I need a major change, or an update, or a plugin I don’t understand (and let’s face it, nothing in Wordpress makes any sense, ever, it’s all written in code for coders), I call Tammy from Tammy’s Designs. Tammy is the one who put this website together for me, loosely based on a theme by Attilus. Tammy also designed my political blog.

Anyway, she’s having a sale this week. Call it a “My son is going to college, ZOMG! Bills!” sale. She normally charges $225 for blog design and setup, as well as ongoing tech support for those annoying plugins and such. But this week only, she’s dropping her price to $180.

You can contact Tammy for further information and samples of her work by emailing

amomandherblog AT gmail DOT com

Although she normally offers hosting, she is “full” at this time. Which is bad timing for me, because I was hoping to switch this spring. C’est la vie, I suppose. Anyway, check her out for design and support. She’ll work with you to give your blog the look and feel that suits you best.

It began with fiction. Once I began blogging about news, politics and war, I stopped reading fiction. My fortunes went to pay for non-fiction tomes on subjects that gave me nightmares.

Then I gave up books altogether. Magazine articles were better suited to my blogger’s attention span.

Until even magazine articles became too long! My attention span became so short I started reading only other blog posts.

I had to retrain my brain to stop eating candy and start eating fiber again!

Fiction. Fun, cheap, sleazy fiction helped get me back into reading.  I picked up something light and fluffy, easy to rip through, and spent a weekend reading it over coffee.

Then I tacked some heavier political non-fic. It took longer. More than two weeks! I kept putting the book down to do something else, wandering off, forgetting about it. But I stuck with it and finished the damn thing.

When you blog, it’s easy to have your attention span eaten away. It’s the nature of the best. Especially with 24-hour news channels blaring their 2-minute sound bites in the background. Everything these days seems to come in easily digested single serving portions, but sometimes you need more substance.

Don’t let blogging eat your brain. Keep it in fighting form with New Yorker-length articles and good juicy books.

Ali Hale has turned blogging for clients (businesses, individuals, corporations) into a career, and her Staff Blogging Course helped me get started to do the same. I love blogging, and I wanted to make money doing what I loved.

With The Bloggers Guide to Effective Writing, Ali continues the lessons learned in Staff Blogging Course and builds on them. It takes and average writer and turns him or her into a great writer. An effective writer.

An effective writer gets the message across simply and efficiently. An effective writer can write an excellent message to blog readers without spending forever hemming and hawing over every semicolon. An effective writer writes what readers want to read.

For $29, The Bloggers Guide to Effective Writing will give you:

An 82-page ebook with fifteen chapters, which include the following:

• Why Good Writing Matters
• Coming Up With Ideas
• Writing At Different Stages
• Writing a Series of Posts
• Using Images
• Polishing Your Posts

PLUS: Templates for fast, effective blogging, AND, $10 off the Staff Blogging Course – did I mention I made money with it? So that means the Staff Blogging Course will only cost you $9. That’s right – nine bucks for a course that I made over $1000 with last year.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be curled up reading The Bloggers Guide to Effective Writing this weekend.

Click here to view more details about The Bloggers Guide to Effective Writing by Ali Hale.

Failure, on the other hand, is much easier to pinpoint. Blogging failure doesn’t come from inconsistent traffic or mediocre revenues. It doesn’t come from negative comments or no comments at all.

In my five years with one main blog and multiple side blogs, I have come to the conclusion that blogging failure can be boiled down to this:

You have failed as a blogger when the demand to produce content outweighs the drive to produce content.

Simple as that. Once you lose the love of it, the pleasure you get from creating something for a blog, you have failed, whether you have 100 or 100,000 readers. If you aren’t driven by it, if you can’t make yourself want to do it, you have failed as a blogger.

I’m not talking about a few days lapse, or a week off (I took the month of December off last year, and put in a guest blogger. Know what happened? I micromanaged the whole affair.). I’m talking about an utter disinterest in your subject matter that you just can’t shake. This doesn’t come from getting called names by your commenters, or by being faced with a significant drop in numbers. Heck, it doesn’t even come from being sued over a post.

When you fall out of love with your subject, or lose the will to write regularly, that’s where failure sets in.

So those of you who are wringing your hands over statistics and revenue, get over it! You’re doing just fine.

And for those who have failed as bloggers: Thanks for trying. It’s not for everyone.

Five years ago when I started mine, I had no idea that one day people would be paying me to blog. WTF? Seriously? Wow. It began with a few ads and paid posts. Hmmm… then people were contacting me to come write for them at their blogs. Some were even offering to pay me!

And I’m not the only one.

There are numerous ways to expand your client base and increase the size of your portfolio. Common tactics used to do this include utilizing your contacts, taking part in relevant discussion forums, being active in freelance marketplaces and even watching industry specific job boards.

One idea that is implemented by some people but certainly not by everyone, is blogging. Sharing your abilities with the world in the hope that the right person finds what you have to offer. Through my experience though, quite a few people fail to have any success when trying to use this strategy.

Today I want to share my own story, and how I made over $20,000 in 4 months when my only source of clients were through blogging.

Now in this article Glenn discusses how his blogging was a matter of marketing, and that’s how he drew clients. It’s a brilliant way of showing off your abilities both as a writer and as an expert in your field.  I get gigs writing about politics (especially in areas of terror and religion) because that’s my thing. If your area of expertise is pet care or life coaching, that’s where you’ll drum up business.

In addition, if you’re a good blogger, you will be asked to write blogs. Companies love adding them, but no one has the patience or ability to actually write the posts. Enter the freelance blogger. A 500 word blog post can earn you upwards of $20 (Actually, it could earn you $1 if that’s what you’re willing to take. Another time we’ll discuss the quality differences between an escort and a crack whore, but not today). Get a few gigs writing 3 or 4 posts each per week, and you have a nice little income. It’s a sweet deal, if you’re doing something you love.

I strongly suggest that anyone who wants to break into freelance writing or blogging for a living tries Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging Course. Do a read-through of the 8 modules, then go back and put the lessons into practice. I did, and have since scored TWO THREE blogging jobs in the last two weeks. Cost of the course: $19. Income of jobs I’ve scored: $125/wk. $180/wk.

One of the lessons was “Pay Special Attention to a Reader”.

The Task – Choose one (or more than one) of your current readers and do something out of the blue that acknowledges them, shows them that you see them as valuable and highlights them to your other readers.

Why This is Important

While many blog tips going around focus upon techniques to help make bloggers and their blogs more famous and well known one of the paradoxical keys to blogging success is that many bloggers who build great blogs actually go out of their way to make their readers more famous and well known.

I actually did this before the course began, by holding an anniversary contest at my site. I published the great works of my readers, then chose one out of the many to highlight and grant a prize to. This wasn’t a contest for drive-bys who are new and have no intention of sticking around. This was for my loyal readership.

After all, without our readers, we might just as well be LiveJournaling behind a locked account like a bunch of emo teenagers. If a blogger blogs and no one reads, did they really type a word?

All of my favorite bloggers (on the political side, anyway) have done this at some point. Not always with a contest, but certainly by pointing out the value of their individual readers to others. I wouldn’t go so far as Ann Althouse and actually marry a reader, but I also never say never!

Darren’s ProBlogger course was full of ideas like highlighting a reader, updating old links, writing reviews and of course – increasing traffic!

He kindly put it all into one tidy downloadable workbook for all us ADD bloggers, so that we could do that perusing thing and not get sidetracked by our email accounts. At twenty bucks it would be a bargain at double the price. But Darren knows that most bloggers aren’t wealthy, and that the current economy sucks. He didn’t feel the need to rape us over the price, which I think is great. Especially since he’s backing it up with a guarantee:

If you’re not satisfied with the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog work book after 31 Days Just let me know and I’ll refund your money – that’s how confident I am that this is a resource that will help you build a dramatically better blog.

I picked the workbook up so that I wouldn’t have to shuffle through my inbox to find something. I printed it out and took a highlighter to it, marking up the areas that I need the most work on. And slowly but surely, I am working on them.

If you’ve been blogging for a while and have hit a traffic plateau, Darren’s challenge might be just the thing you need to break out of it. Remember, a few extra readers every day really adds up after a while. You can get the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook here. Good luck, and let me know how it turns out!