As you probably remember, a few days before I made my “new design†live I was giving away free advertising slots. Of course, the new design only lasted a few hours as there were several major problems with the coding, IE compatibility, and much more. While I plan on writing a detailed post on what went wrong and how you can avoid my downfalls that is for a later date.
For now, I wanted to give a “shoutout†to all of those who were supposed to receive a free link for a month. Even though the last design did not work out, I will more than likely make a change sooner rather than later.
Although I am disappointed that the first design did not work out, especially because I paid for it, things are still going well with ChrisBlogging. November is already the highest month yet as far as traffic and earnings are concerned. Additionally, my RSS readership is closing in on 100.
Thanks again to the advertisers listed above, as well as all my readers!
When it comes to my freelance writing career, I very rarely seek out the help of others. This is not to say that I can do everything on my own, but I am not the type to outsource my work. If I were to do this, I would be putting my good name on the line because clients believe that they are working directly with me. But on the other side of things, when it comes to blogging, hiring help is what I do. Since I am only good at writing content, I often times hire people to help with design work, coding, and much more.
At this time, ChrisBlogging is achieving more success than I thought it would. This success has not come in a monetary sense, but more in the way that I am helping aspiring freelance writers.
No matter what field you are working in, keep this in mind: do what you are good at, and hire somebody else to do the rest. Sure, you can attempt to learn on your own as well, but in order to keep things moving forward hiring help is always a good idea. I have read conflicting opinions on this, but I strongly believe in concentrating on your core competency and then getting help for everything else.
In many cases, you may even be able to trade your services with somebody else. In the past, I have written website copy for clients who have in turn designed a new website for me. This way, neither one of us has to pay in cash.
With my new theme on the way (hopefully within the next two days), there is one last thing that I need help with to take ChrisBlogging to the next level; that being search engine optimization. I am getting a decent amount of direct traffic each day, but my search engine numbers are lagging behind.
That leads me to this question: are there any SEO professionals out there? I would much rather work with a loyal reader than anybody else. If so, send me a quick email and we’ll chat.
In the meantime, keep doing what you do best; anything else you need help with can be outsourced.
I know that a lot of bloggers write their posts in advance, and then use the WordPress timestamp feature to their advantage. While I do this from time to time, I prefer to write each post and then make it live within an hour or so. This has never been a problem for me, but I can see how it could be an issue. I definitely think it is a good idea to always have a standby blog post that you can call on. This way, if something ever comes up you can make the post live and never miss a beat.
Here are three things to keep in mind when writing a standby blog post.
1. Make sure that your standby blog post is not time sensitive. After all, you never know when you are going to use the post. If I write about a current event and don’t post it until next month, it is safe to say that nobody is going to care.
2. If you use one standby post, write another one shortly thereafter. You do not have to rush to do this, but it is something that you should add to your to-do list. Even though you may not have to use the post for several months, you will always know where it is at when the time comes.
3. If you use WordPress, you may want to save the article to your dashboard as a draft. This makes it easy for you to sign into your account and make the post live within a matter of minutes. This is much more time efficient than having to dig up the article on your hard drive, and then paste it to the WordPress feature.
At this time, I have a few standby posts that I can call on in the future. I don’t have any plans for using these posts, but you never know when an emergency will force me into doing so.
Do any of you bloggers do the same? If so, what are some tips that you follow when composing these standby posts?
