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Friday, 21 October 2011

How to Start a Blog Which Stays Active Even After 5 Years - DailyBlogTips

How to Start a Blog Which Stays Active Even After 5 Years

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 09:31 PM PDT

This is a guest post by Zul. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Back in year 2006, a few reliable sources reported that more than 150,000 thousand new blogs were created on daily basis. This comes out to about 2 blogs in every second or approximately one-fifth of the number of new babies born everyday.

You would wonder, after five years, what happens to this plethora of blogs? Yes, like you, I am wondering how many of them survive.

Nonetheless, it won't take an Einstein to figure out the possibilities. They are either; alive and kicking (and have grown into a reputable blogs with large followers); barely active (with one update every six months or so); alive but in dormant mode (no updates at all); or completely extinct.

This leads to the next perennial questions: How can one start a blog and continues blogging even after half a decade has gone by? What's the secret to blog longevity? How do you sustain the momentum of ploughing through the highs and lows of the world of blogging?

Perhaps the following three ideas can help shed some light into solving the puzzle.

Passion first, money later

I think we have heard this too often. But then, many conveniently ignored this advice and instead chase primarily for the latter. With money in mind, some went to conceive blogs based on the so-called high-paying keywords such as "Chicago attorney" and "mesothelioma" despite absence of any decent interest and knowledge about the said topics.

Extremely successful bloggers like Darren Rowse started blogging about topic he is most passionate about: photography. The web was never commercialized until he came into realization that the traffic generated from his blogging was more than enough to create a considerable income. He next moved to another niche, which is to blog about blogging. More income ensued.

So, find your passion first. Soon, money will follow.

Create close and ever-lasting access to your niche

You are what you (read, watch, etc.). What comes out of our mouth or fingers are the result of our exposure to world. Without the appropriate inputs, the outputs are destined for disaster. Every one knows that these days, knowledge is power.

It is always wise to blog about something we consistently have access for updates on the latest happenings. For example, a discerning fitness blogger keeps stacks of Men's Health magazines, subscribes to fitness web updates, renews his gym membership yearly and tries out new whey powder brands so that he or she is ever ready to share newly-acquired knowledge.

Be ambitious, but play it smart

Starting a blog about BMW sports cars is probably a smarter move than blogging about cars in general. It tells that we are ambitious yet focused in our own niche. The power of "small" should never be underestimated.

The best-selling book, The Millionaire Next Door tells us the importance of zeroing into our own niche. About half of the self-made millionaires studied by the author are in very small business niches. They have smaller size of prospect, but the bulls-eye targeting helps create non-stop revenues.

Zooming into a specific area gives us the ammunition to blog what really matters, and when it matters. This in turns cultivate quality blogging principle.

Also, that way, we are not pressured into blogging just about anything from the daily overwhelming updates on a certain general field. And we know what happens when we can't handle too much thing. We stay out of it.

So, next time you are starting a blog that would last for many years, do seriously consider the above points.

About the author: Zul has been actively blogging since 2005 and is the founder of SKOR Career, an Asia-based career news and development blog.

Original Post: How to Start a Blog Which Stays Active Even After 5 Years

Changes In the Publishing Industry

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 01:30 PM PDT

If you wanted to be a book author, until very recently, you would inevitably need to find a publisher, land a book contract, and then go through all the hassles involved in the process until your book finally hit the market.

Well, things are certainly changing.

For one thing you now have ebooks and authors that self-publish their work and promote it themselves, mostly on the Internet. Instead of trying to get the approval of established publishers they go directly to the market and try to get people interested.

A couple of weeks ago there was another interesting development. Amazon announced that it would create a sort of publishing arm, out placing traditional publishers as middlemen. Here’s a quote from a NY Times articled titled Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal:

Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers.

Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer's fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.

You probably know Tim Ferris, author of “The 4 Hour Work Week” right? He was the first author to sign the deal with Amazon, and many others are following. In my opinion this is both a smart move by Amazon and a good thing for the industry in general, and it will make the market for books more meritocratic.

Either way it’s certainly worth to keep an eye on those trends.

Original Post: Changes In the Publishing Industry