Jon does all of his blogging via speech recognition so he seemed like the logical guy to ask to cover the topic – in the video (I’m glad he agreed). In the video Jon makes recommendations of software, hardware (the hardware is key) and even demonstrates how he uses them in his everyday blogging.

The video itself is also a great illustration of using video to communicate.

Speech Recognition for Bloggers — The Ultimate Guide from Jon Morrow on Vimeo.

Recommended in the video by Jon are a number of technologies including:

Bookmark this video today as it’ll be something you want to come back to again.

Jon Morrow is Associate Editor of Copyblogger and Cofounder of Partnering Profits. Get more from Jon on twitter.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Speech Recognition for Bloggers – The Ultimate Guide

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1) You’ve been with someone for a few years and you love that person. You guys are about to get married. You’ve always thought that you had a pretty good guess of what your fiance’s number is, but very shortly before the wedding, you find out that the number is astronomically higher than you expected. I doubt anyone is going to say that they would call off the wedding, but does this change the way you perceive your fiance? Does it make any difference at all?

2) You’re at a bar and you’re chatting someone up all night. You guys are really hitting it off. You know for a fact that you are NOT going to be doing it that night. There is the possibility that you could go out with that person again, and it could be a quick lay, or it could go into a meaningful relationship. Then you find out that they have slept with 100 more people that you have. Does your opinion of that person change? Do you automatically decide that you will not enter into a relationship with that person, but rather you would try to get some sex, then bolt?

The response from the post was great. 120+ comments were left including some great advice. I also had a lot of emails from readers saying that they learned a lot by reading the suggestions of others – many wanted to see these reviews done regularly.

As a result I’m going to try to do these reviews on a monthly basis – today we have another one. As a little bonus to ProBlogger.com members I’m going to choose the blogs being reviewed from members blogs (with their permission of course).

What follows is some information from the blogger behind Man vs Debt – Adam Baker.

Before you give your review in comments below please read through this information as it’ll give you context for your review as well as some of what Adam is hoping to pick your brains about.

Please also note that while you’re welcome to give your honest feedback on the blog that we’d love for this to be a constructive experience for everyone. Don’t just tell us what you don’t like – share what you’d do to improve it.

I started Man Vs Debt. in the last week of March 2009 (this year). I originally started it to chronicle Courtney and my journey to get out of debt. We were in the final stages of selling all of our possessions, paying down our consumer debt, and relocating to what we thought was going to be Australia (ended up being Australia -> New Zealand and soon Thailand).

It’s been amazing so far. When I got started I knew absolutely zero about blogging, just that I liked reading them. I didn’t know how Wordpress worked or even what SEO stood for. But I was quickly amazed at how strong the blogging community was (and still is). This is especially true of the personal finance niche. I received an overwhelming amount of help early on from many experience bloggers, whom I would have never guessed would have taken the time to help.

Over the last 7 months or so, I’ve decided to concentrate almost all my effort on building a community. As I’ve been traveling, I’ve found a home sort of between the personal finance niche and the life design/travel niche. The blog has become even more transparent than I originally designed (which is fine by me) with us sharing our list of possessions, finances, and ups and downs of traveling.

Early on, I decided to not feature advertising on the site. Recently, I’ve picked up a small group of affiliates that I either use everyday or that I’m a hardcore fan of. I still haven’t moved promoting these to the front page, but did set up an ‘ Endorsed‘ page (pictured in part below) where I list them.

My largest goal right now is to increase my monetization. I’ve decided to focus this into product creation. I’m working a my first eBook (a joint venture), which will be a cheaper price point and will be the start of several products over the next 2-6 months. I’m trying to plan where to put this design wise on the blog, too. I’m torn between putting it in the top position in my sidebar as I’ve had a lot of success prioritizing this space with RSS, Twitter, and e-mail subscriptions.

I’ve also thought about moving some affiliates to the main page. I’ve avoided this so far, as to keep my main sidebar as clean and simple as possible. I’ve decided to focus attention onto my subscription and highlighting my most popular content.

Besides increasing monetization a bit, I want to continue to increase the ‘community’ factor of my blog. I’m proud of the amount of comments and want to continue to find ways to encourage people to comment. I want to feature my twitter account and facebook account(facebook currently not featured) to connect deeper. I’d also like to focus on having people use StumbleUpon, Twitter, and E-mail to spread articles they enjoy. I think focusing in on these 3 platforms only would provide a way for different audiences to spread, but not confuse with 100 different options. I like simplicity (aka, I’m torn on whether to use the ShareThis plugin, etc…).

Also, I’d like to drive more people to convert to my e-mail list, called the Militia. I need to allow people to sign up from the main page (right now they have to click through to separate page). I run product giveaways exclusively to the list and give out special information on upcoming features, events, etc… I know I could do this a lot better. And because I will be monetizing primarily off my own information products, I need to improve sooner rather than later! :-)

Lastly, I want to continue to promote transparency on the blog. Courtney and I keep an up-to-date list of all our possessions ( Our Stuff page) and also track all our expenses and budgeting on a daily basis (Our Financespage). While not everyone may care for this, the majority of e-mail I get from new visitors is about these sections. It really helps establish a connection and I’m not sure I’m doing enough to promote these pages.

OK – there’s Adam’s story and some of what he’s trying to achieve with his blog. I hope that it not only provides you with some context for commenting on his blog but gives some insight into the life, goals and approach of one blogger which may help inform your own blogging.

Adam has agreed not to make any changes to his blog over the next week (except for new content) so that we can all see the same thing and have plenty of opportunity to look his blog over and comment on it.

Over to you – what constructive advice do you have for Adam? What do you like about what he’s doing on his blog? What could he improve upon? I’m looking forward to hearing what the community comes up with and to seeing how this impacts Adam’s blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Review This Blog – Man vs Debt

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Most bloggers that I know have at least one – whether it be compulsively checking blog stats, constantly tweaking template designs, obsessing over plugins and widgets, spending hour after hour ‘networking’ on Twitter, becoming preoccupied with SEO and… even allowing ourselves to become consumed by learning about blogging…. and not doing much of it.

The reality is that as bloggers there are many tasks that compete for our attention. Many of them are important and can bring a lot of life to our blogs but most of them can also become distractions and counter productive to our blogging if we allow them.

This video asks you ‘what is your blogging vice?’ and challenges us all (and I need to hear it) to focus upon one of the most important aspects of blogging – creating content.

Don’t get me wrong – the tasks mentioned above can all be important and as bloggers we need to approach our blogging in a holistic kind of way – but this week while looking at 50 blogs while judging a blogging competition it struck me how much most of them could be improved with more spent on the creation of quality content.

My challenge to us all today is to refocus our energies upon creating compelling and useful content.

If that means no more reading about how to blog here at ProBlogger for a bit while you go and DO IT – so be it. After all, it’s what it all boils down to if you’re looking to improve your blog.

Get the full sized video at Youtube.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Warning: Watching This Video May Lead to Work! [But It'll Also Improve Your Blog]

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- Tweet useless daily drivel updates. Unfortunately twitter founders believe that their product should be mainly used for boring update stuff like, “I’m taking my dog for a walk” and “just had a salad”, so be sure to pepper in some of the mindless stuff to your updates.

- Avoid Mass Un-following. It appears that twitter is more concerned about un-following a whole lot a people over following too many.  I guess their reasoning is, why follow all those folks in the first place if you are only looking for them to follow you back?

- Up-load an image. Nothing quite screams spam like a default twitter image.  Don’t be lazy, upload a photo.

- Don’t use Auto DM’s - Everyone hates getting spam in their direct messages, and might block you right away.

- Don’t spam links - This one is the hardest one to follow when you are trying to make money off twitter, so keep your affiliate links to a minimum and mix them into retweeting great articles.

- Use Hummingbird2 - If you want to grow your follower numbers into a massive army, then you need to be famous or using auto-follow twitter software.  Hummingbird 1 will grow your numbers fast as it uses the follow unfollow chrun method, when can get your account suspended.  Hummingbird 2 uses keywords and follows users at a much more natural pace.

Chad ~ AKA ~ ProTwit

http://www.twitter.com/protwit

I thought I’d take his suggestion and jot down a few notes – both as a way of getting my head back into blogging but also because looking at the tweets I received this morning it’s a problem many bloggers face.

As my head is a little scattered today (as I readjust) I’m going to tackle this as a list post – here’s a few thoughts:

2 lattes with a sugar in each is a fairly essential part of my blogging routine. 2. Cafes

More important than the fact that I get caffeine into my bloodstream each morning is the fact that I do it in one of 2-3 local cafes each day. I find getting out of the house (I usually walk to them so get a 10 minute walk in too) helps me to snap myself out of ‘home mode’ and into ‘working/blogging mode’. I also find that blogging in public is stimulating too – sitting in the middle of a cafe is noisy and some might find it distracting but for me I find it actually helps me generate ideas and takes me into a slightly more social space than sitting alone at home in my front room. 3. Planning

I’m a fairly impulsive guy and like to go with inspiration when it hits – but I also find it helpful to spend time thinking ahead and planning posts in advance so that I have some places to start when I have a tough day where inspiration is not coming. On my laptop’s desktop I have a number of text files which are full of topic ideas, titles of posts and even half written ideas that I pull out when I’m stuck for ideas. 4. Series of Posts

Similarly I like to have a series of posts on the go at any time so that I can always write a post that adds to something I’ve written previously. For example I’m currently working on a series of posts on Principles of Successful Blogging which I add to 1-2 times a week and will keep running over a number of months. 5. Twitter

This post is an illustration of the power of having a network of people to help you generate ideas. I didn’t ask for ideas for posts but out of a conversation I was having on Twitter someone made a suggestion that helped generate an idea for a post. While Twitter can be a distraction – it can also be an idea goldmine if you use it well. 6. Face to Face

I won’t do this today as I’m manically trying to catch up on email as well as write new posts – but I do try to schedule in face time with other bloggers, twitterers and entrepreneurs ever week or two. This is partly just because I’m an introvert and could quite easily work alone for weeks on end (and need to force myself into some social interaction) but it’s also about putting yourself into places where your ideas connect with other people’s ideas – that’s often where the magic happens. 7. Capture Ideas

Another strategy that I use is to capture as many ideas as I come AS they come into my brain. I returned home from my vacation with a notes documents on my iphone that has 6-7 post ideas that came to me over the last 10 days. Some I may never use but there are a couple that will be great posts that I’d have forgotten if I didn’t immediately capture them in some way. I used to carry a notebook for this but my iPhone now does the job. 8. Exercise

I mention that I walk to the main cafe that I work out of – in addition to that I try to walk each day for at least 15 minutes. I find that this gets the blood pumping and often gives me a burst of energy to help me through the afternoons. 9. ProBlogger.com

This might seem like pure self promotion but I’ve found the ProBlogger community to be a goldmine of ideas and inspiration. I’m increasingly finding that I come away from the forums having seen what someone else is trying with inspiration to see how their approach will work on my blogs. Whether it’s the ProBlogger forums or another one – I think putting time aside to interact with and collaborate with other bloggers is something well worth doing. 10. Mind Mapping

I’ve outlined how I do this previously in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook but using mind mapping is something I do on a weekly basis to come up with post ideas. 11. Manage Distractions

I read many articles on this type of topic that tell you to eliminate distractions. They say to get offline completely, don’t check your email, turn off Twitter etc. I’ve written about doing this previously but am starting to wonder if completely eliminating these ‘distractions’ is always a good thing. For me it’s more about ‘managing’ the distractions and setting aside time to do them rather than just ending up with a confused jumble of tasks. Instead of flipping between writing a post, email, twitter and Facebook – give yourself set times for each task. For example – in the writing of this post I’ve stopped 2 times when I’ve begun to feel my energy for the post decreasing a little. The first time I jumped on Twitter for 5 minutes, the 2nd time I cleared a few emails. Each time I gave myself 5 minutes for the other thing and was disciplined about jumping back into writing for another 10-15 minutes. Perhaps this is just my impulsive nature Attention Deficit Disorder but sometimes I find eliminating distractions can actually make it harder to work as you’re wondering about the things you’re trying to ignore. 12. Play

Related to the idea of managing distractions I recently have been rediscovering the power of letting myself ‘play’ a little each day. While many productivity experts talk about eliminating ‘playful’ activity I think it’s actually important to spend time each day doing activity that is a little mindless and fun. I can’t explain why – but often after a 10 minute burst of playing a tower defense game on my iPhone or reading a post but funny article on a humor blog I often come back to my ‘work’ feeling a little fresh and with good ideas for my blog. There’s something powerful about letting your brain relax every now and again – the key is to manage it and not let your whole day become one big playful experience. 13. Golden Hours are…. Gold!

My ‘golden hours’ are 9-11am. This is when I do my best creative work and as a result it’s when I do most of my writing. Admin tasks, Emails and other tasks can usually wait a couple of hours until I’ve cranked out a post or two!

A lot more could be said on this topic. In fact I asked my Twitter followers how they get their brains into gear after a holiday and they came up with some great suggestions too. You can read them here.

What would you add?

How do you get your brain into ‘blogging mode’ after some time away from blogging (or first thing in the morning)?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

13 Ways I Get Back into Blogging after a Vacation

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Our first date was fine. He was better looking than I remembered, polite, smart. Then WHAMO! 3 kids and 2 ex wives. The kids I can handle. But TWO exes before you’re 40? That’s a dude with some serious issues. Though he had a good job, you gotta figure he’s broke supporting all of that.

I think I wanted to appear open-minded, so I agreed to a second date. I pretty much regretted it immediately. 2 exes. But whatever, you never know.

The second date was bad. Early on in the evening, we were talking about social media, and he made fun of people with blogs. I grinned and asked if that meant he didn’t google me. He looked at me like I was an alien and asked if I had googled him. Are you kidding me? Who doesn’t google dates these days? I google everyone the second I find out their last name.

But back it up. He made fun of people who blog. Though I realize my blog is probably the first thing I will have to give up when I enter into a relationship, I’m desperately hoping to find someone who at least gets it. He said something about how it was wrong for anyone to think their life is that interesting. Clearly, he did not google me. My life is amazing.

After that conversation, he was on his 5th beer, I was on my first. It had only been ½ an hour. Sweet. He’s Mr Baggage and an alcoholic. Right up my alley. At some point, I made fun of a cousin of mine who is atheist. He pounced on this, and I spent the next hour and half listening to why organized religion is shits and being atheist rocks. It was a very one sided conversation. I think I went up to use the bathroom at one point and he didn’t notice I’d left.

I did my best to steer the conversation to other subjects, but it was fruitless. I may have led him to believe that I thought pre-marital sex was not kosher. I meant it as a joke, but he had no sense of humour. So the end of night: we had both taken the subway- for him, it was responsible considering how loaded he planned on getting. For me it was for convenience. The parting was uneventful. I spent the next 20 minutes of my ride trying to decide if I was the type of person to keep a guy in my phone for the purposes of a booty call. He was good looking after all. Of course, I’d have to worry about the possibility of him passing out on me or speaking.

So I get off the subway and immediately get a text message “Hey Darcie. It was great getting to know you. I think it’s best we just be friends. Good luck in your search.”

HE dumped ME. I got dumped by an alcoholic atheist blog-hater with 2 ex wives. Excuse me while I got into seclusion. Clearly, I am not meant to be part of society.

While at Blog World Expo recently I recorded this video interview with Abby Johnson from Web Pro News. We covered a variety of topics including why email marketing is not dead – internet marketing for smart people – the new FTC regulations and touched on a new project I’m working on with Brian Clark and Chris Brogan.

Read other recent email marketing posts on ProBlogger:

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Email Marketing is Not Dead

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We posted a week ago that we’re doing this but wanted to give a final opportunity. In 3 hours from now (1pm Easter US time) the price goes up from $1.95 USD a month to $5.95 USD a month. If you get in before the cut off you’re locked into the lower price forever.

Update: The introductory offer is now over.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Your Final Chance to Get ProBlogger.com Membership for Just $1.95 – 3 Hours to Go

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I was dreading this date. I can sit through bad dates…I’ve had a lot of practice. But I just wasn’t sure that I could sit through a bad date with a guy closer to my dad’s age than mine. I braved the night out. When I find myself in these situations, I just pretend they are work associates. I can hang out with an old guy if it’s work related.

I walk in, and the dude is sporting a haircut that went out of style in the 80’s, a shirt that went out of style in the early 90’s and about 1/2 a bottle of cologne. Seriously, I think he bathed in it. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else the entire date. He was also from the burbs. Being older than me is one thing, but from the burbs is something completely different.

I’ll admit the conversation wasn’t horrible, I tried to keep it in a neutral zone and told him about life growing up on a farm. He was making rather desperate attempts to find out my age. Asking me what decade I considered childhood, etc. I thought it was fun to avoid his questions.

He asked my why I had never been divorced or why I didn’t have kids. I’m used to this type of questioning, but the way he put it, he made it seem like a bad thing. “So, you have no baggage then?”. I thought that was a good thing.

I always thought I looked younger than my age, but I’m pretty sure this guy thought I was older. When I hit him the fact that my 31st birthday is coming up, he just about spit out his beer, then excused himself to use the washroom. When he came back up, he asked me flat out if  I saw “this” going anywhere. I stressed the different stages we were at in our life, what I meant to say was that his grown daughter and I probably have more in common. So I paid my half of the bill and left.

I seriously had to wash my sheets the next morning. The smell of his cologne transferred onto me then onto my sheets and was giving me a headache.

Are you responsible for a website that has so many ads that it looks like Dale Earnhardt Jr. should be driving it in circles at high speed with a strange aversion to right turns?

That is because your advertisements are out of control.

Like all things in life, with advertising you need to know when to stop. If there is one thing that drives me crazy, it’s arriving at a blog and being bombarded by a mess of Goggle Adsense, pop-ups, and 125×125 banner ads. All of these are ways to bring in some cash for your hard work, but at what point does it become counterproductive?

Here’s a hint: if I need to scroll down to get to your content because you have nothing but ads above the fold, then I am never coming back to your site. I will not click your ads. I will not subscribe to your feed. I will not download your e-book. I will not tell my friends about you. Are you getting the point? Too much advertising on your blog is simply insulting to your readers.

You need to come up with some simple guidelines for your ad campaign and stick to your guns. I’m not going to tell you that this ad is good and that one is bad. But I will tell you that there is certainly a point where the next ad you put up will cost you money.

Try testing yourself. Click on any post in your blog and scroll down to an arbitrary point in the post. Now take stock in what you see. What percentage of the screen is dedicated to advertisement? If the number is too high, then you’re readers are not happy (if you have any left).

So what percent of space should you dedicate to displaying ads?

Let’s look at the other popular media outlets our there. In television for example, the average 1 hour show has about 44 minutes of programming and 16 minutes of commercials. That is an ad/content ratio of just over 26%.

Print magazines are far worse. The average magazine has an ad/content ratio on the order of 40%! This doesn’t exactly demonstrate a devotion to reader satisfaction. Could this be part of the reason that print magazine circulation has fallen more than 10% since 2008?

So what can we take away from these numbers? For starters, you need to get your ratio down as low as possible. Certainly the 40% magazine standard is a failing number, and in my opinion, the 26% TV figure is not much better.

All the ads in the world won’t do you any good if there is nobody there to see them. If your blog has been sitting idle with no growth in earnings, subscribers, or traffic then try removing some of the ads. You will find that a user friendly site with solid content and a few small ads will consistently outperform a confusing cluster of banners.

So unless your blog has a world class pit crew and can do more than 200 miles per hour, you better do something about your ad/content ratio. My challenge to you is get your ratio down to 20% or less. Your readers (and your revenue) will thank you.

Image: aarmono

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Does Your Blog Look Like NASCAR?

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I’ve read a lot of blogging success stories in my four-year blogging history. Sadly, they’ve always been about other people, rather than me. And, when I do see them, although they are real, I get a sense that the owner didn’t have to work as hard as I have. I see people getting big on Digg yet my domain is banned for no reason or linked to by Seth Godin and getting ‘famous’ overnight. I don’t want to sound bitter, but it just seemed like success was happening to everyone else.

Once I had this realisation, I decided that if I wasn’t going to get featured on Digg or Delicious for my new site, I would work on:

And what happened? In one year I managed to build my blog to just over 4,000 subscribers. Sure, it isn’t the success story that everyone else raves about, but it’s realistic and it is attainable. Or maybe I’m being hard on myself, because I don’t see that many blogs reaching these numbers either.

Some of you might be completely confused by that statement and to others it will make perfect sense; let me explain. When I look at my own stats, I can see that it took me 5 months to reach 500 subscribers (which isn’t a bad rate of growth at all). Can you guess how many it took to reach 1,000? Just two.

You see, when I first started out, I was a complete nobody in my niche. I was fairly known in the internet marketing industry but totally unheard of when it came to personal development. Because of that, I had to establish a brand. I went with a logo people would remember, a unique design, and a desire to focus on content that simply helped people be who they want to be. Everything I would write would have the focus of helping people get what they want out of life.

From there I started commenting on other blogs, being active in Twitter and writing the best articles I could. I worked hard, but within a few months I was at the 500 subscriber mark. Once you get to this stage, things start getting much, much easier because when you’re trying to promote content that has no audience, you have to find people who might want to read it and show up where they are. Once you have an audience and write great content, they’re going to start sharing it for you.

If you’re struggling to get your first few hundred subscribers then don’t worry, as they’re far harder to get than the next few hundred. With the 5 months left in the year I managed to grow my site by another 3,000 subscribers. How’s that for exponential growth.

I have been one of the most active guest posters on the internet in the last few months and for one simple reason: guest posting works. It gets you out there in front of a new audience and just as importantly, an audience that understands blogs and what they are all about. If someone subscribers to another blog in your niche, there’s a good chance they will subscribe to yours if you’re writing great content. One thing I have noticed some people do is “piggyback” off a certain blog and try to write there as often as possible.

This is usually for big blogs which can help you get a lot of traffic and subscribers quite quickly, but things will soon die down. If someone has seen you guest post on a site 5 times and still haven’t subscribed, they probably won’t when you write your 6th article. There are a few benefits to varying your guest posting which include:

As a blogger, I’m quite sad about the rise of Twitter in a way. Instead of the hundreds of backlinks a good blog post could get a few years ago, it will now get hundreds of tweets. Sure the tweets can bring you traffic, but they are not going to help your post move up the ranks in search engines. Even as a way for collaboration, people are focusing on twitter communication rather than working with people via their blogs. Usually these writers are coming from the scarcity mindset and if they link to other bloggers they’re going to lose readers and help their “competitor” grow.

First of all, if you think of other bloggers in your niche as competitors then you have a totally backwards mindset. Secondly, I’m here to tell you that collaborating with other bloggers in my niche has been one of the best things I have done. To begin with, I created a list of the top Personal Development Blogs. This ranks all of the blogs by their statistics and of course helps my site visitors find other amazing blogs to read. This page has been linked to by hundreds of websites and it has helped put me in touch with tons of other bloggers.

On top of that, I also ran a series called the Personal Development face-off. I had the idea thanks to Daniel Scocco doing this in the blogging niche and thought that the content generated here would be excellent. Even though I was featuring two other bloggers on my site every week, hundreds of people emailed me to say how much they loved the series. This positioned me as someone who was at the top of my industry because I had all of these top bloggers taking time out to work with me and because I was sharing the best content in the niche.

Don’t be afraid of promoting other bloggers. These days, I try to promote great content on other sites as much as possible. It will come back your way.

Glen is the author of ViperChill, a blog on Viral Marketing. He aims to help people create remarkable websites that others just naturally want to talk about.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

3 Lessons I Learned Building 4,000 Subscribers in 12 Months

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So J and I are heading to Las Vegas for a much needed vacation starting Monday! J’s never been and I’ve only been once before, long ago for Blogworld Expo my first year with b5media. I spent most of my time on that trip with my head up a web server’s ass so I’m looking forward to returning on “me time”.

It is off season, and getting on into November, so hopefully there’s still a little warmth left in the days. I won’t be impressed if I arrive to something like the picture on the right. I think that was December of last year so we’re cutting it pretty close

We’re going to take in a show or two and check out a number of higher end restaurants. Recently our addiction to the food network has reached new heights, and with a push at home to cook as much as possible from scratch, this trip should provide plenty of inspiration!

What’s your favorite thing to do in Las Vegas (gambling is not an answer!) Got any favorite destinations, things to do and see? Anything exciting away from the strip people might not normally think to do? Would love to hear from you.

If you knew that your blog was vulnerable to hacking or some similar security breach, would you take the time to secure it?

I ask, because I want to warn you about a greater, yet almost unknown threat to your blog’s growth and success.

That threat is stress and as today is National Stress Awareness day in the U.K, I would like to share with you why I believe how you respond to stress is perhaps the most critical factor in determining the future success of your blog.

We’re all gathered here because we share a common goal. To grow our blogs to be more successful. And what’s at the core of a successful blog, is a Blogger that has developed a high level of skills at;

Put more bluntly, a Blogger with 100 Readers and averaging 3 comments a week is at an entirely different level of skill and capacity than one with 1 million Readers and 3,000 comments a week. The difference isn’t just luck. If you have the skills and capacity of a successful blogger than success is only a matter of time.

However, in the case of most of us, success is a journey of mastering these skills. That doesn’t mean we are less worthy, less capable or have any less potential, only that we need to develop new skills that we haven’t yet developed. Isn’t this why we read Problogger?

And as any journey involves uncertainty, risks and hazards, so too does our journey to success. In order to grow our blog, we have to grow our skills to a higher level. In the course of this, it is natural that you will experience stress because you are stretching beyond your comfort zone and developing new or refining existing skills.

In fact if you don’t experience stress on a regular basis, then you either don’t care enough about what you are doing or you aren’t coming close to your potential.

Let me give you a new way of looking at stress, that will be more useful in aiding your evolution as a Blogger.

Stress is like the river between two lands. On one side is your current situation. On the other, is the end result that you dream of. If you refuse the risk of getting to the other side, success will forever evade you and you will have to resign yourself to this being as good as it gets. But if you are successful in your attempts, you get to live your dream.

Therefore the key to your success (and that of your blog) is going to be entirely determined by how you respond to stressful challenges.

Every stressful situation is actually an indicator of where you need to upgrade your skills in order to be more successful. You only feel stress because the road to your goal is blocked. And when you are capable of overcoming the block, the stress will dissolve. And you are closer to reaching your goal.

Let me try to make this clearer with some concrete examples. Say your stress seems to be about dealing with negative comments or wondering if your next post will be popular.

Sometimes negative comments or unpopular posts are helpful because they guide us back when we get off-course.

Mostly though, negative comments are just someone who isn’t really our audience reading or someone misunderstanding. Equally unpopular posts are often those too simple or too complicated for our Reader’s level of understanding so that they don’t see the relevance in it.

These only really bother us, when they hit upon something we doubt in ourselves.

What it’s really about is gaining the clarity to know what your purpose is and who the right audience is for you. When you gain conviction and clarity in what you believe and what you are doing, it is like standing a flag in the ground and so the Reader’s that are right for you will gather around it.

If instead, you are all the time only seeking praise and approval from everyone, then there is nothing solid, consistent or certain about your blog and so ultimately it will never gather a sizeable core of die hard fans. Only drive by Readers who scan a post and never look back.

Or maybe, most of your stress comes from having too much to do and too little time to do it in.

In this case, your success depends upon you resolving this conflict. Which ultimately means identifying the critical core tasks, finding more efficient ways to get them done and being capable of doing all that needs to be done.

Typically people see stress as an irritation that interrupts them. And so almost all stress management materials are focused on stress relief. Go for a walk, exercise, breathe deeply etc. These are all tactical ways to deal with stress. Which is perfect if you are stuck in the swampland of stress and need to get some perspective. But tactical stress management, in itself will never lead to growth and development.

What if your stress is caused by the problem above, of too much to do and too little time to do it in. Well feeling stressed about it, is only going to make things worse and so you’ll end up running around like a headless chicken and getting nowhere.

Relieving the feeling of stress will be helpful, as it can enable you to look at the situation more clearly.

But the only way of resolving the situation, once and for all, and so growing your blog, is by getting clearer about what should be done and becoming more productive.

So as a Blogger looking to evolve you are really needing to develop your skills at strategic stress management.

Say you are struggling for ideas to write original posts. Tactical stress management would try to dull the pain or ease your emotional discomfort about the situation.

Yet the fact that you have a problem bothering you, indicates a deeper problem that it is critical to your success. So changing the way you feel is only part of the problem.

Strategic stress management focuses on identifying what caused the problem and why. In addressing the root core of the problem, you not only overcome the emotional discomfort, but you become a stronger and more evolved person. Which in the case of your blogging leads to a more successful blog.

We are as successful as our limits allow us to be. And so as we remove our limitations, we become more successful. Stress is an early warning indicator of a problem, or problems, that will limit you, or your blog, from growing.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Why Stress Can Kill Your Success Or Help Your Blog Succeed Wildly

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So, Sunday night, I sent him a text telling him that it wasn’t going to work. I didn’t hear back from him, and assumed it was over. He hasn’t been at the gym for several weeks, so I figured his soccer was taking the place of weights, and I’d probably never see him again.

Yesterday, he sent me a text asking if we could be just friends. This is where I get confused. We never saw each other, and had a relationship based on 10 to 20 text messages a day, only during working hours. What kind of friendship was supposed to be salvaged? I responded that we’re still on good terms, and yes, we could be friends. Assuming he meant that if we run into each other at the gym, that we would be casual about it all.

I got a text from him about 20 minutes ago (around 7:30am) saying “good morning”. Where’s he going here? Are we going to be text buddies for the rest of our lives?

Recently I’ve found myself a belated fan of this relatively obscure show (well in Canada anyway). I’ve known about it for years but it never made it to my PVR list until recently. The charm of the show is wrapped up in the 3 charismatic presenters and the absolutely outrageous litany of hare-brained challenges, races and outright spectacle they’ve been responsible for since hitting the airwaves in Jeremy Clarkson’s re-envisioned, resurrection of the long running BBC show in 2002.

I’d become quickly attached to the 3 personalities during the occasional times I happened to trip over it on the weekends, but with it playing nightly on BBC Canada currently, this is a great chance to get it on the PVR and really catch up. Imagine my surprise then when I find out tonight co-host Richard Hammond had been involved in a horrific crash during a speed test segment for the show back in 2006. A coma, brain injuries,  a long road to recovery later and Richard did make a full recovery, returning to the show in record time considering the nature of his crash.

Well as all enterprising individuals with a good story to tell eventually do; he wrote a book about it called On The Edge: My Story.  I’m told it’s quite compelling and will be making it onto my night stand in short order. Honestly if you find cars interesting at all, you owe it to yourself to track this program down on your dial and get to know these guys. Check the vid below for Richard’s return appearance, complete with footage of the amazing crash.

I ask the question because while at lunch with a few bloggers recently the topic came up and I discovered that the answers to the question varied quite a lot.

My Approach

My approach is somewhere in between. I don’t base my choice on which products to promote on price – but rather the quality of the products I’m promoting and their relevancy to my audience.

For me promoting a variety of quality products at different price points seems to work well. I find that in doing so I seem to be able to attract buyers at different price points and levels and the commissions tend to add up to collectively be a worthwhile exercise.

What about you? If you’re promoting affiliate products I’d be interested to hear whether price is one of the factors that you consider when choosing a product to promote?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Does Price Impact Which Affiliate Poducts You Promote?

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