As it says in my tagline; “It starts with an idea. It’s what you do with that idea that matters.” But keeping fresh ideas coming can be a challenge, especially if you write in a crowded niche like this one.

I try to keep fresh ideas rolling in by checking my twitter stream and checking in with some of my favorite blogs on a regular basis, but it can be a challenge to be productive once you dive in for a good read. It’s easy to find that you’ve lost hours of your day reading articles on various topics and end with your mind full of ideas that will never be nurtured from a glimmer of inspiration to a completed article or guest post.

Write it down

One of the best tips I have to offer is to write down your ideas. It doesn’t matter if you do this by jotting them down in a ragged, dog-eared notepad (my preferred method) or if you start a new draft in your preferred blogging software. (Ecto anyone?) Get those ideas jotted down somewhere or it is very likely that you’ll lose them in =your next round of brainstorming.
Even the barest wisps of an idea may spark something wonderful and exciting at a later time, so don’t underestimate the power of a three word concept or a vague notion. These can be very powerful tools and should not be overlooked. You’ll be amazed at how these little notes to yourself can spark grand ideas when brought together.

Bring your ideas together

There will be many times when just one little idea won’t be enough to spark something larger. These ideas alone simply aren’t strong enough to carry a theme, but when you put several of these ideas together they become something far greater.
Routinely look over your idea pile. Check to see one or more of these ideas compliment each other. If so, combine the two and see if the result is something worth taking the time to flesh out. I’m positive that you’ll find this method works very well after a few days of keeping up with what you’ve thought.

Expand on older ideas

Look back over your old posts or articles and see if there are ideas that you can expand on. Perhaps something that you wrote a year ago needs a fresh take. Have the rules changed? Has public opinion shifted? Do you feel in retrospect that you could cover a particular piece of information in more depth? If so, run with it.
Older topics can often benefit from a fresh perspective. Product reviews can be updated as updates are available. As an example, each time TweetDeck is updated with new features, you have something to write about. It’s free fresh content. In my case, ecto has been upgraded, so its time for a new article on software I use every day.

Relate your own stories

Always remember that your experiences in your chosen niche are the things that make your writing unique. No single person shares the same experience in anything, whether that experience was using a word processing program or a web-based text editor. Your point of view is your unique angle and should be leveraged.
If you have a particular method you use to attack a large project, write about it. If you have a pet peeve with everyone else’s favorite blogging platform, write about it. If there is something everyone else seems to have mastered that you are struggling with, write about that too.
Anything that relates something personal is a great idea for a blog post. Your readers want to connect with you on some personal level. The last thing you want to do is drone on like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This will not only detract from your readership, it will bore the pants off people and they will leave.
In droves.

Anything goes

Anything that you have a decent understanding of or a point of view on is good blog fodder. Making sure the content is high quality is something that only you and your readers can attest to, but in time I assure you that quality will come; It’s only a matter of time.

Now get in there and start writing.

Today started like most others.  Coffee, check email and twitter.  Also normal for the beginning of the week were people lamenting the fact that it was Monday again and that a full week of work was ahead of them.

I think a small adjustment in thinking is in order here.  Mondays are not your enemy.  Mondays are your friend.  Mondays hand you a full week of opportunities after a weekend of relaxation.  You get to tackle projects refreshed and renewed.  You’re at the top of your game.

All it takes is a change in the way you look at it.  Mondays shouldn’t be dreaded, they should be embraced.  By thursday you’re getting tired and if you’re like most people, on Friday you’re concentrating on the weekend.  Monday is a day full of possibilities.

Embrace your Monday, everyone.  Get something wonderful accomplished.

Peace.  I’m out.

It seems that just when everything is moving along at exactly the clip you want it to, something will come along to break your routine.  In my case summer is a hard time for work.  I have three kids in the house that doubles as my office.  This is enough to throw my most carefully planned projects into a state of chaos, but work and writing must continue even through the maelstrom.

Focus your time

In the months of school break my writing and research time are diminished, so I have to shift gears to make the most of the time that I have.  Instead of a solid four hours of no kids in the house, I have two in the morning and then I have the time after the kids are in bed.  During both of these periods I try to cram in as much writing as I can.  I leave researching to the moments that I have in between “Dad!s” and focus my writing time to those precious moments of silence that I do get.

By using only times when I won’t be interrupted for writing I ensure that this time is productive.  Email, twitter and RSS readers are shut off. All of those things can be dealt with in the hit and miss schedule of the rest of my day.  Quiet times are for writing. Period.

Research in short bursts

Unless something you are researching is a very in-depth subject, you can generally research in bursts.  Not only does this give you time to mull over what you’ve read in between dealing with everything else that demands your time, but it may just lead to ideas you wouldn’t have explored if you were buried neck deep in just one topic.

Researching in small, focused bits of time also causes you to remain focused on what you’re doing.  Minor distractions are just that.  Minor.  if you work from home you have to learn that there will be times that your attention is pulled from what you need to get done.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

The little things can’t be allowed to bother you.  Yes, they will stop you from writing a 600 word post in the middle of a hectic day, but they won’t stop you from laying out all the notes you need to complete that project as soon as the house quiets down or in the morning when it is still quiet.

If something comes up during research time, jot a note, go deal with the interruption and get back to research as soon as possible.  Don’t get frustrated with it.  Interruptions are a part of the work at home world.  Those who deal with them and can get back to it are the ones who succeed.

Keep goals reasonable

Don’t set goals that will sabotage you.  Set reasonable, attainable goals for your work sessions.  nothing will undermine your confidence or productivity faster than setting goals that are nearly impossible to complete.

Keep your spirit high by breaking large projects into easily finished segments.  That way, even if you don’t have a lot of time to put into your larger project at a single stretch, you still have the satisfaction that comes from finishing what you set out to do. Trying to accomplish more than you can reasonably attain is a sure fire path to frustration.

In closing

Working from home (or even in certain office environments) can be stressful.  The methods above can help minimize the chaos a bit. Keep in mind that even monstrous projects can be broken down into much smaller and achievable tasks.  These can usually be completed in a relatively short amount of time.

Know what your day has in store and remember, I managed to get this piece out by focusing my attention to each point.  The actual post took several hours and was written in-between lunch, picking up kids from sleepovers and dealing with an active three year old.

If I can do it, so can you.

Setting a mission statement for your blog is an important part of defining who your readers perceive you to be, what you write about and where in your niche you fit in.  It’s an important step in defining what you are trying to achieve as a blogger.  it’s also something I hadn’t thought about much until now.

I realized just recently that not one of my blogs had a mission statement.  That my focus was more on generating content than it was on focusing my content based on what I was trying to achieve.  Without a mission statement, it’s easy to drift from topic to topic, rendering your overall content a useless, cluttered mess.

That all changes today.

In all actuality the mission statement of this particular blog has been in place since Mach of 2009.  In that month two very important things happened.  Firstly, I called BullS**t on the world of snake-oil marketers.  Secondly, The death of Paul Harvey, one of America’s most influential voices, made me pause and evaluate the way I should be doing business.  These things combined gelled what I’ve been doing, but until today it has never been written out.  It should have been.

From this point on, the following mission statement will be hung on my office wall where I can refer to it every time I write an article:

Mission Statement

My mission is to provide factual, relevant information to bloggers and writers with absolutely no BS involved.  I will not represent any information as fact unless I have tested it and proven that it works as described.  If it hasn’t helped me, I will report that it has not.

That’s it.

As a mission statement goes, it’s not complicated, but it holds the focus of Jerry D. Russell dot Com to one topic, with one goal and one focus.  This blog is about the business of blogging.  The mission statement forces me to remember that.

With that focus in mind, I can make sure that articles on topics that aren’t quite blog-centric can find a home on my other properties.  There will probably be a fit for them there.  After all, my cooking blog focuses on food, cooking and the culinary industry, it’s not a great fit for posts about blogging, that’s what this site is for.

In the same bent, even though readers of my cooking blog don’t mind a little information about my family and events, that’s not what they read that blog for, and it’s why I have a “Daddy Blog” where I can just talk fatherhood, parenting and work at home dad stuff.

I hope that this will inspire you to write a mission statement for your own blog.  Defining what you are trying to accomplish with your writing will help you to keep on track on those days that you feel the need to drift.

Clutter in your workspace is inevitable from time to time.  We all at times have a need to set a few things on our desks.  papers, notes, keys, wallets, cups, pens and other supplies will inevitably find their way onto the desktop. The problem for many of us (including me) is that these things tend to stay there even after their purpose has been served.

Clutter in your workspace is a distraction.  Even if you aren’t concerned with the mess, you’ll still waste valuable time and effort shuffling through lose papers, rearranging items and trying to find a place to put your coffee or tea cup. The old saying is that a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind and whether you like to think so or not, the saying is true.

We all have different reasons for our clutter.  Mine is a combination of items I’m working on, mixed with the odd bit of leftovers from completed projects and topped off with little bits and pieces brought to me by a curious 3 year old. it all adds up very quickly and I’m the first to admit that it goes on for far too long at a time.

There are many ways to get yourself and your workspace organized, and I’ve compiled a few of them below.  Hopefully some of these tips can help you get your office, home and life running a bit more clutter-free.

• Declutter your desk with a general reference filing system
• Declutter an office and gain productivity
• Declutter 101: conquering office clutter, part 1
• How to declutter your to-do list
• Office Cleaning and Decluttering: A Plan to Thoroughly Organize a Workspace
• How to declutter your workspace
• Declutter Your Desk
• Getting Set to declutter your office
• 7-Day Declutter and focus – YouTube video
• 10 ways to remove clutter from your life

Hopefully one of the methods described in this list can help you find a little bit of order in the chaos of your everyday work life.  Even if you only manage to get a little bit more organized, it’s sure to boost your productivity by a lot.

What are your tips for staying clutter free? Is there something that has worked for you for a long time? If so, please share, we’d love to hear about it.

I’ll be quite honest.  When I started this blog, I hadn’t for a moment thought about making any money with it. I actually bought he domain name with the intention of using it to keep my family informed of what we were all up to at a time when we had moved to Texas and they were all in California.  Then came my cooking blog.

That blog quickly became a business.  It makes an income, and though that income isn’t staggering, it is more than enough to pay for the hosting and maintenance of all the sites that I run.  The funny thing is, I don’t know when I started treating that blog like a business.  It just kind of happened one day.

This blog was still maintained off and on, usually reflecting whatever my current interests were.  It has no real niche other than general geekery.  It has been a writing blog, a tech blog and has finally settled into a blog about blogging.  It’s comfortable there.  I’m comfortable having it there. But it has never been a real part of my business.

This has been one of the biggest mistakes in my blogging career.  Not only have I failed to leverage the power of my own name, I failed to leverage the power of a successful blog that could have been driving traffic to this one.  I already have a fairly large readership.  Of these people many are professionals, almost all are bloggers.   In short, I have readers.  Ready made, waiting for me to nudge them in this direction. I have failed to do that until now.

Why the sudden change in thought?  To be honest, it’s not so sudden.  I’ve been stubbornly hanging on to the thought that Jerry D Russell dot Com was just “my little place” and should be left alone.  But then two things happened:

The first realization was that this is still just my little place.  It doesn’t matter if I move it from personal to business.  My other blog did that years ago, but it is still a source of great pride and pleasure for me.  This blog doesn’t need to be any different, and should really be more enjoyable because the scope is broader.

The second thing that happened was that I downloaded John Chow’s Free eBook The Ultimate Blog Profit Model. As I was reading through what he had written, I realized that it closely mirrored what another very profitable and popular blogger had said.  That blogger was Jaden Hair of steamykitchen.com.

Both of these people are from wildly different niches and wildly different backgrounds, but both have enjoyed monstrous success. For me, that has been the turning point.  Yes, blogging is still fun for me; It always has been.  That’s not going to change.

The difference is that very soon, there will be a business plan and a mission statement hanging above my desk.  Those will be referred to daily and followed.  It’s time to move forward and stop playing at one thing while pushing the other.  I currently have three blogs.  Each of those blogs is a Jerry D Russell dot Com joint.  All run under my name, so it’s time to turn this blog into the hub for all the others.

Are you treating your blog/website as seriously as you should?  If so, congratulations;  If not, go get yourself a business plan and a mission statement.  It’s time to get serious.

I don’t care how much of a writing machine a person happens to be.  Even those ferocious and seemingly unstoppable bloggers that routinely crank out up to three full posts per day occasionally find that they simply can’t find anything to write about at the moment.

Every writer has faced the dreaded blank page.  Each of us has found that we just don’t have any words, no matter how hard we try to coax our muse out of hiding.

Sometimes all it takes is a spark of inspiration to get your creative juices flowing and in that bent, I’ve started trying to find new inspirations for this and my other blogs.

I’ve found a few great sources of inspiration and I felt compelled to share them, so here you go:

• 100 Sources of Blogging Inspiration,
  A great article at Ink Rebels with a full hundred ideas to get you more motivated
• 100 Blog Topics Chris Brogan hopes YOU write
  If there’s anyone you want to learn from, it’s Chris Brogan, and he has ideas for you
• Keep it going: Blog inspiration
  A good article by Elliot C. Black with tips for keeping that content flowing
• Hot Topics
  An unusual tool that opens seven pages of related topics from a keyword search, possibly useful, kind of fun
• the LinkBait Generator
  If you’re the kind of writer that absolutely must have a title before you can write, this might just be the tool to help you out.
• 7 Places I Find Blog Topic Ideas
  A good article on SitePoint on how one blogger keeps his content fresh.
• Prompts, Story Ideas and Photo Inspiration
  If you’re a visual person, having a picture to spark your creativity can be just the thing
• Using Google Alerts for Blog Post Topic Inspiration
  Automate your inspiration process with Google Alerts.
• 25 Great Sources of Blog Ideas and Inspiration
  Comprehensive and insightful article by SiteSketch
• The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration
  Trust Coppyblogger to have a great tip for getting inspired
• Unusual, Cheeky and Fun Ways To Get Inspiration For your Blog Posts
  A good collection of tips for finding new post ideas
• The Imagination Prompt Generator
  Really stuck for an idea?  This can help you out
• Get inspiration from blog comments when writing your next post
  We should already be doing this, but it’s good to keep in mind

I could go on, but with several hundred (or thousand) ideas already included in this list, I’m sure you’ll find something to get you motivated. I know I did.

Now get out there and Blog!

I have to apologize about the lack of content here lately.  There’s a LOT going on around here right now and I simply haven’t had time to maintain this blog in the manner I would like to.  We just got word of our next station, so I’ve been busy getting things ready to make for a smooth transition to our new home in the Great State of Alaska.

Yep, Alaska.  The last frontier.  land of bears, moose, wolves, polar bears, 24 hour days and 24 hour nights (depending on the season.)  The move is still several months away, but there is a lot of preparation involved before we can be sure that it will go smoothly.

So for a few more days at least, I’m giving as much attention as I can to handling those things that I MUST get done on my end.  During that time, I’m afraid I won’t be posting much.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

It’s time I attack one of the least favorite items on any of my checklists, changing a blog theme.  Sure, when I was just starting out in the world themed sites and blogs I thought it was cool to change my theme fairly often, but I’ve come to have a series of different thoughts on the subject over the past few years.

Changing themes is a pain.  It’s a bigger pain when you have to change it before you’re really ready to, as I’ve had to do in this case due to a plugin conflict.  I prefer it to be a well thought out process with a nice tidy unveiling at the end, but I was unable to do so in this particular instance and to be frank, that irritates the hell out of me.

Changing a theme too often also dilutes your brand and should not be undertaken lightly.  Your visitors really should know what to expect when they stop by, not be confronted by a never ending series of changes to design, layout or flow.  Familiar is good, especially if the experience was good to start with.

The reality is that change is inevitable.  In this case I’m changing to a new theme because my previous theme simply placed too many restrictions on my creativity.  Image and attachment sizes were limited to incredibly small sizes or worse, squashed by the theme’s overly-strict CSS rules. I started writing this blog to share my thoughts, my acquired knowledge and to let my creative side out a little.  A theme that holds any part of that back becomes stifling after a certain point and that’s what happened here.

So I’m asking for just a little patience as I get things tidied up around here and get all the little details put in place.  Everything will be back up and running the way it should be within the next few days.  The new theme (and I’ll let you all in on what that is as soon as I’m positive I’m going to stick with it) is up and running.

Peace. I’m out.