Browsing Category: "Blogging"

How to Make Blogging Fun Forever

Whether you make money blogging or just do it to share your thoughts with the world, you will be much more likely to stay committed to your blog if it doesn’t seem like a job or chore. Your blog should be updated regularly, considering that is the point of blogging, but you might eventually reach the point where you feel like you have nothing left to say. If you’re not careful, your blog may end up joining the millions of other blogs that have already been abandoned.

I have a LOT of blogs about all sorts of different topics and many of them are even on the same (or similar) topics. I don’t update all of them frequently but several of them I do, so I know a thing or two about trying to keep the blogging juices flowing. Keeping your blog alive while continuing to have fun doing it doesn’t have to be difficult. Below I have discussed a few good ways to make sure you have fun with your blog while updating it regularly:

1) Be enthusiastic about your topic

The more inspired and passionate you are about the subject of your blog, the more that enthusiasm is going to shine through to infect your readers. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging about internet marketing strategies, amusement park rides, weight loss tips, or whatever else – if you find it interesting, your readers probably will too and you will have fun blogging about it.

It’s also helpful if you have strong writing skills so you can properly express your enthusiasm rather than writing flat, uninteresting posts. Blogging is writing so you should like to write if you are going to stay enthused about your blog.

2) Always be looking for new information

When you first start your blog you’ll probably have a ton of tips and information to share, but as time goes on you may feel like you’re running out of things to say. A good way to overcome this problem is to stay active in finding more information relating to your blog topic. Visit bookstores and skim through magazines and books related to your blog niche. Do the same with your local library. Sign up for newsletters on your topic, and participate in online discussion forums. Watch TV, read other blogs, browse through article directories, etc… All of these resources offer plenty of information to keep your blogging ideas fresh.

3) Challenge yourself

One of the most common reasons bloggers get bored and abandon their blogs is because they stop challenging themselves to create interesting posts. Try playing an association game each day to liven things up. Let’s say your blog topic is digital cameras. Take any book (a dictionary or thesaurus works well) and open to a random entry. If you opened to the word “counterfeit” you could research and write a post about how to avoid getting burned by buying a counterfeit camera. If you opened to the word “lopsided” you could write a post about how to properly frame a shot, and so on. You can come up with thousands of great post ideas this way.

You could also start at the beginning of each week with a list of topics and push yourself to write at least one post per day to cover one of the topics – even if you may be tempted to procrastinate. Challenge yourself to be more disciplined, and eventually you’ll enjoy the feeling of satisfaction you get from accomplishing your blogging goals.

There are plenty of ways to keep your blog fresh and fun forever. Just think outside the box and use the things that are all around you. Blogging is a great way to make money, build a business, share your thoughts, have fun, and so much more!

Posted in Blogging

Make Your Website User Friendly

As an internet marketer one of the most important things you can do for your website or blog is to make it user friendly. Many people focus on the theme and design of their website or how SEO friendly it is, but they don’t think about whether or not it is actually user friendly. After the major components of the back end of the site are done and the SEO plan is worked out, it is important to have a user friendly site that people want to stay on and come back to.

I don’t know how many times I have been to websites or sales pages and wanted to find the back button as fast as I could in order to get away from it. Some website designs are just plain awful. If the website design isn’t good, the reader will often lose their place, get lost in the clutter, or have a hard time knowing where to go or what to do next.

The reason so many sales pages for products are only one page and have a fairly simple design is because it works. The simplicity of the design allows the user to know exactly what the product does, where they need to go next, how to order, and all of the other information the designer/company wants them to see.

In contrast, a highly cluttered sales site with multiple pages, pop-ups, flashing banners, movies playing automatically, and an unfriendly design will have a much harder time getting their point across in a way that allows the user to feel they benefited from their visit. Most visitors will want to get away from a site like that and the internet marketer will lose the potential sale.

There are so many reasons to keep your design simple, from a user’s standpoint, the ability to find the information they need without searching the entire site is a huge help. Keeping navigation straightforward and in the same area will allow users to always know they can go back there to find what they need next.

Using large enough fonts and adequate reading room is a must. You want your user to be able to easily scan your site for content to read. Most people don’t read an entire sales letter. So make it easy on them by using headings and bold when appropriate to highlight the main points of the copy as well as bullet points, numbered lists, etc…

Having a user friendly website will save you a lot of time and hassle dealing with issues later and will certainly help you to make more money with your internet marketing business. Keep advertisements organized and friendly, content in an easy to read column with minimum clutter, and always have a good navigation structure so it’s easy for users to get where they are going and benefit from your site. If the user enjoys their time on your site they will most likely become a subscriber, customer, loyal reader, or do whatever else it is that your site is trying to get them to do.

Sometimes internet marketing strategies can be applied before you actually go out and start promoting. Having a user friendly site is one such case.