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.

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.

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’ve spent the better part of the last few days going through the first hundred or so posts I ever wrote on my flagship blog, Cooking by the seat of my Pants. Not because I wanted to, but because the adoption of a new plugin is requiring me to.  In the course of doing so, I came to realize something.

I started out as a horrible blogger and writer!

Those original posts were (and are) terrible.  Even though they serve a purpose, they are a complete mess.  The writing was rambling, not concise and told no story.  Almost nothing I wrote stuck to a single subject or topic, even though the venue makes it nearly impossible to do anything BUT stay on topic.  I honestly wonder how I ever managed to keep growing a reader base in those early days.

If I had been reading my own work with someone else’s’ eyes I probably never would have come back.  I’m pretty lucky that the recipes speak for themselves even though the writing was abhorrent.  Google has been good to me because of that and almost all of my traffic is search engine based.  Recipes are perfect keyword fodder and search engines can’t tell that the rest of the post was useless, rambling drivel.

Practice makes (almost) perfect.

Those first 60 or 70 posts made me want to bury myself under a large rock somewhere. But at some point along the way I noticed that things were changing.  The writing style was evolving.  The posts became more focused and specific even though they were beginning to get longer.  The tone and cadence of the writing became consistent.

There were still horrendous errors in grammar and style but things were far less painful than they had started out.  It was obvious that the writer (me, in this case) had gotten his sea legs under him and had found his own voice in his niche.  He was still a bit shaky, but definitely moving forward. The writer was finally walking on his own two feet, rather than borrowing style from his peers.

From walking to running.

Another 50 or so posts into the blog and it had become obvious that this guy had found his place in his chosen niche.  The writing was confident, witty and read easily.  There was a beginning and end to the posts.  Most of the posts told some sort of a story related to the author’s own experiences.

Rather thatn trying to figure out exactly what he was talking about, the tone head become conversational.  It was more like sitting across a table from him than it was having him talk “at you”.  And the posts stayed that way.

Since I’m talking about my own writing, I also have stats to back up what was happening.  As the writing on my blog got better, the traffic increased.  The increase was gradual but it was definitely there.  It was at the point that I found a way to allow my passion for the topic to show through in my writing that this happened.  As time went on the increase became marked and is still increasing today.  As a very good friend of mine said to me on twitter:

“Sweetie, we all sucked when we started”

It doesn’t matter if you have a masters in English or graduated tops in your creative writing workshop, we all sucked at blogging when we started.  If you’re just starting out today, expect to cringe when you go back in a few years and read your first few posts.  It takes time to find your voice.

A blogger’s life is much like that of a newspaper article writer.  we’re expected to come up with content on a regular basis.  That content is also expected to enhance the lives of the people that read it in some way.

Whether you’re trying to make someone smile, think or to share some really cool tip that appeals to the people that drop by your blog, it’s your job to make sure that they walk away with something they didn’t have before.  if you fail to do that, they just walk away.

It takes time to find a balance between frequent posts, the tone you set in your writing and the amount of “you” that you are willing to put out there.  After a few months of writing in the grueling schedule that is blogging for the mainstream, you’ll just fall into a stride and stick with it.  At that point you will find that it’s a lot less painful to look back on those older posts.

Many people who are just starting out in blogging, especially those who want to pitch affiliate products to their readers, write for the sole purpose of earning affiliate commissions.  There’s nothing wrong with writing posts geared to earning money, but there are things you should consider before you choose a product to present to your readers.

Trust Is Key

Promoting products or services to your readers carries with it a moral obligation.  In engaging in a dialogue with your readers you are working towards one thing and one thing only: Earning their trust.

The trust of your readers is by far the most important commodity that your blog has.  It dwarfs the importance of traffic, page views or comments and search engine ranking can’t come close to the importance the trust of your readers holds to your future as a blogger.

Trust may not be hard to gain initially.  A person who randomly finds your post through a search engine has no reason to doubt what you’ve written.  They will trust your writing initially, so in that sense it’s pretty easy to gain someone’s trust. It’s also the easiest thing for a blogger to lose.

Steer just one reader wrong and he or she will begin the process of eroding the trust you’ve worked so hard to earn from your readers.  Given enough time and a few people who feel you haven’t been completely honest with them, you’ll find that there isn’t anyone left to convince.  The readers who feel slighted will have made their case all over the Internet and you will find that your readership suffers. Or worse, it will disappear completely.

One of the most widely used axioms for this is “Give.  Give. Give. Give and give some more.  Then ASK”  You’ll have to do a lot of giving, usually for no profit, before you can ask your readers to take action.  This mantra is one that should be remembered.

Don’t Sell It If You Wouldn’t Use It Yourself

Avoid promoting affiliate programs based solely on the amount of commissions that they pay.  Always ask yourself if you would use the product or service that you’re writing about. If the answer isn’t a resounding YES!; don’t sell it.

If you like a product or service, consider purchasing it yourself and give it a run for its money before pitching it to your readers.  Not only will you be able to give your readers the benefit of your experience but if you’re really excited about what you’re selling, that excitement will shine through in your writing.  This in turn will get your readers excited about the product and gives you a much better chance of making a sale.

Aside from the financial benefit of only selling what you know and love, you’ll have pride in what you’re offering to your readers.  That feeling is something you can never experience if you’re just selling whatever has the biggest payout at the moment and it will show every time you recommend a product.

First of all, for those who may not have heard of social networking, here’s a quick definition, courtesy of Message In a Box:

A broad class of web sites and services that allow you to connect with friends, family, and colleagues online, as well as meet people with similar interests or hobbies. Popular examples include MySpace, Facebook, Linked In. Even photo sharing websites like Flickr have become places for social networking through shared interests.

So in a nutshell, social networking is a way for people with similar interests to share ideas with each other.  In this respect it is the Internet analogy to the cracker barrel in the general store of the 19th Century or the coffee shop of the late 20th century. people get together, share ideas and information and pass it along to others.

More Than just A Cracker Barrel

The main difference of today’s social networking isn’t what is said or how it’s done.  The difference is in the number of people that can be affected by the information being provided.

In the past, spreading an idea through your idea by word of mouth could have taken weeks or months. Modern social networking sites can spread word of an interesting topic to millions of people in just a few hours.  Imagine writing a post at 7:00 am and having a half-million page views by dinnertime.  It can happen.  It does happen. More often than you think.

The key is to determine the kind of information that people want to share with their friends or will find interesting enough to pass along to others in their social networks.  Once this begins it can quickly lead to traffic spike’s so heavy that servers are overloaded to the point of reset.

The Twitter Effect

If you aren’t already using twitter you are missing out on a golden opportunity to bring readers to your blog.  Occasionally tweeting about a post you’ve written will always get a few page views, but if that post is interesting to your twitter followers you may get the chance to experience what has been dubbed “The Twitter Effect.”

In a nutshell, the Twitter Effect works like this:

You tweet about your latest post, or a post you want to highlight

One or two of your followers Re Tweet your tweet, including the link you provided.

A few of each of their followers also Re Tweet your tweet

More and more people find the subject interesting and continue Re Tweeting the post to their group of followers.

And So-on. And So-on

In most cases this can gain you 20 to 30 pageviews, assuming that you have a few hundred followers and that at least one of those people found what you had to say interesting enough to send it along to his or her group of friends.  On a good run this might even generate a hundred new views to your blog over the course of an hour or so.

There are those golden moments however, when that re Tweet finds itself in the hands of someone who has thousands and thousands of followers.  That person shoots your tweet out and then a few hundred of his or her followers return the favor.  In these cases you can see hundreds of thousands of pageviews in a very short amount of time.  In some cases, enough will hit at one time to actually take your web server offline!

While this last example is uncommon for most bloggers, assume just for a moment that you’ve tweeted a bit of information along to such notables as Pete Cashmore (@mashable), John Scalzi (@Scalzi) or even Ashton Kutcher (@AplusK) in response to something that they’ve said.  One mention by any of these notables could generate enough traffic in seconds to drive an underpowered server over-capacity.

If any of your monetizing schemes relies on pageviews, you could make a few hundred dollars in mere minutes, assuming of course that your host is up to the flood of traffic that will be coming your way. You could also gain a few hundred extra daily readers just based on the recommendation of someone that people respect.

Don’t be afraid to Tweet directly to the A-Listers if you have something of value to offer them.  They are people too, and they have interests just like everyone else, just don’t expect them to respond, and never ask for a Re Tweet or get disgruntled if they don’t reply. Remember, any A-List player on any social network is flooded by comments and requests on a daily basis.  A failure to respond is not generally a slight against you, but more likely they simply didn’t have time to reply.

There Is No Magic Formula

If you were expecting me to give you the secret to creating a viral post that will immediately jump to the front page of Digg,com or be visited by everyone using Stumble Upon, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t.  I’ve written articles that generated massive amounts of traffic from both of these sites, but the reasons that they are more popular than others is a complete mystery to me.

To further complicate matters, the niche you write in will also determine what other people with similar interests find noteworthy.  To say that there is one formula that can be followed would be foolhardy at best and absolute lunacy in any other case.  The right combination of information and writing skills depends on your audience.  Listen to them closely and in time you’ll find what gets your work noticed.  Once that happens you’ll check your statistics package one day to find a pleasant surprise.

Twitter Is Not the Only Game In Town :  Use Other Social Sites As Well

While I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Twitter, it is not the only social media site you should be worried about. Twitter is  just the newest of the super-sites and the one most social-media types are talking about right now.  Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, Squidoo.com and other social media sites are all still incredibly viable ways of bringing in traffic and should not be ignored.

A front page listing on Digg can generate hundreds of thousands of visits.  Getting “stumbled” through StumbleUpon can do the same and I know several people who swear by the power of Squidoo lenses to gain visitors. The site that works for you will depend on the type of people using these services. and the type of content that you write.

Make sure you look at what topics are hot on each before pouring all of your effort into any one social media site. The only one that I have found to be general enough for just about any audience is Stumble Upon and I use it to generate a slew of traffic to those of my blogs that appeal to a wide audience.  Other social media sites are focused on their own niche topics, such as technology or design, so if you write about knitting, you  probably won’t want to waste your time getting mentions on Digg; you’ll never make the main page and you will have spent a lot of time and effort for no good reason.

The Reason It’s Called “Social” Media

When using social media to help drive traffic to your sites it’s easy to forget that the medium is called social media for a reason.  Far too often site owners that are trying to boost traffic or sell products seem to forget that to be effective, they actually have to give something freely to the community.

Social media sites are built around community.  If you fail to post replies to other people’s tweets or engage in conversations it’s very likely that you’re not going to find yourself with all that many followers regardless of the number of people you follow yourself.  Worse, you’ll find that those people un-follow or block you once they discover that all you are doing is talking about yourself without ever giving anything useful to anyone else.

In the case of media sites like Dig and Stumble Upon, if you aren’t recommending sites other than your own, you’ve defeated the purpose of the concept and most users of those services won’t give your recommendations much weight.  Th key is to Stumble or Digg other people’s blog posts and articles regularly.  Be sure to leave encouraging (and relevant) comments or descriptions when you do.  then if you point people to your own information they’ll be more likely to take a look.

Get Listed

Though most blog directories aren’t frequented often by humans, Search engine robots love them. Having your blog listed in as many relevant places as possible does nothing but help you show up when people search for the topic you write in.

There are literally hundreds of blog directories for any given niche. Finding the right directories can be a difficult task if you don’t have the right tools.  While I can’t cover all of these directories in this venue, there are a few places you can start when looking for directories related to your niche:

The Weblogs Compendium

The RSS Top 55

Search Engine Journal’s 20 Essential Directories list

There are many, many more places to look, but the previous three resources should get you well on your way to getting both a bunch of free inbound links and better traffic quickly.

Harness the Power of Community

Blog directory sites were once simple lists of blogs in different topical groups, but no more.  Communities have grown around blogging.  Sites like BlogCatalog bring thousands of bloggers together with similar interests together every day and this type of community drives traffic and creates exposure.

Once your blog is listed, you have the choice of joining groups of blogs in your niche and can send announcements to other members of those groups when you post a new article. The chances of getting traffic increases exponentially when you have a large number of friends, as they will help promote your blog for you, as long as you help promote theirs.

As a community site, BlogCatalog also has a discussion forum.  posting in this forum often will also generate traffic to your blog for little more than a few minutes of your time on any given day.  It’s far too valuable a resource not to use.

MyBlogLog is another community of bloggers much like BlogCatalog and can be just as beneficial in building traffic and returning readers (Assuming it stays alive through budget cuts), but each of these resources must be actively used to have maximum effect.

Who doesn’t want to get something for nothing?  Who doesn’t enjoy knowing that they won something that a lot of other people were also trying to win?  Most people enjoy entering  contest and most people like free stuff.  It’s a sure fire way to get people to visit your site.

Contests have the potential to go viral, with friends telling their friends and so on… The word spreads and more people visit yo enter the contest.  This not only boosts traffic in the short term, but if handled correctly it can net you a large number of regular readers who would never have otherwise seen your blog.

Free For Me, Free For you

Don’t think that holding a contest means that you have to spend a penny.  A contest can be as simple as letting your readers know that the best answer to a question will have a post dedicated to the reader that gave the winning answer.

In the world of food blogs these kinds of competitions are quite normal.  The blog owner asks what his or her readers would make from a certain set of ingredients and a winner is chosen at the end of the month.  In this case the contest is very foodie-centric, but there is no reason that the concept can’t be applied to any blog.

Play around with the idea and I think you’ll find that this concept can fit your niche as well.  It might take a bit more effort than offering a prize, but it costs you nothing if your blog isn’t already generating an income on its own.

Giveaways

Giveaways are by far the most common type of contest run on blogs, and for good reason. Giveaways will almost always draw in a large amount of traffic but depending on your niche, finding relevant products or services to give away can be very expensive.

If you write about design software you could be looking at multiple-thousand dollar price tags for giveaway items in your market.  In cases like these, look for items that most people are interested in, but won’t set you back by far more than you’ll generate by running the contest.

Think inexpensive MP3 players, add-on packs for software your readers might already have or gift certificates for online stores.  people will still compete to win these things but it will cost you a lot less than full-featured items.

Put Your Dignity On The Chopping Block

Don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself!  Offer something foolish if a goal isn’t met or tell your readers that you will do something crazy if you can’t accomplish something you’ve set out to do, then post a running commentary on the process.

Let’s say you’ve decided that you could potentially generate $2,000.00 in a single month using a certain advertising method, or that you’ve decided to enter a contest yourself.  Let your readers know that if you fail to achieve your goals you will do something crazy like shave your head and post a photo of it or post a YouTube video of your hair coming off. (I don’t suggest this one for my female blogging sisters.)

I will almost guarantee that a stunt like this will bring in a lot of traffic once people hear about it. It’s off-the-wall things like this that make reality TV shows and outrageous game-shows so popular.

In the end it costs you nothing more than a little bit of your dignity and if you’re the fun-loving type it might just be the key to an explosive amount of traffic long after the contest is over… If you can tolerate the indignity of it all.

Learn From The Best

You can learn a lot from really great blogs. You can, and should, try to emulate what they do well and avoid what they don’t do as well as they could. The problem is, truly finding a great blog to replicate.

Truly successful bloggers never stop learning.  Like any other writer, they study other bloggers and writers in their niche, they share their experiences and mistakes and they make the experience of visiting their blog a social one, where the visitor is welcome to leave their own thoughts and join in on the discussion.

These A-List bloggers never forget that their readers are people and that their input is important.  They answer comments whenever possible and provide information that is useful or uplifting.  But who are they?

Blogs To Model Yours After

I could list all of the blogs that I look up to here, but honestly, the blogs you should be looking at belong in your own niche.  Look at the people who dominate your chosen subject matter, they are the people you should be emulating.

This book is far to short a venue to list the top blogs in every niche, but there are places you can look to find those blogs that truly shine in your topic of choice.  There are several websites that cover this topic, but the two best sites to keep your eye on are The Bloggers Choice Awards and the Weblog Awards.

Both of these sites showcase the very best in blogs as determined by other bloggers and the readers of those blogs. If you want to see who the people in the know think has done the best work throughout the year, these are the places to look.

In a more general sense, I’ll offer up a few blogs with shining reputations of their own and point out why I think they are worth taking note of:

Steve Pavlina . com:

Steve’s Blog is a good example  of high quality writing and timeless content.  Older articles are updated when necessary and Steve is happy to share his experiences with his readers.

Steve even took the time to write a post about how he makes money from his blogs. (This is a very long post, so make sure that you’ve got your beverage of choice handy and a good comfy chair.) He shows you how much money he’s made and how to get traffic to your blog and revenue from your own blogs if that is what you want to do with them.

The Pioneer Woman:

Though The Pioneer Woman may be best known for the recipes she serves up daily at The Pioneer Woman Cooks, the blog is actually an all-around package that hit like a tsunami in 2006.  since then the popularity of this lifestyle blog has known no bounds.

Not only has Ree taken the world into her daily life through words and photos of life on a working cattle ranch and everything that comes with it.  This blog is worth a look if for no other reason to simply revel in the expert writing, but when you’re done you should take notes, you might just learn something about writing and allowing your visitors  a little peek inside what makes you tick.

Lifehacker:

Lifehacker is the blog to watch if you plan on covering late breaking news, events or review the newest products on the market. The key to this blog is clarity.  posts are short and to the point.  Just the necessary information is covered so that the reader can get the information they need and move on with their day.

Please remember that Lifehacker is a multi-author blog, so if you plan to model you efforts after theirs, you might want to think about having a team of like-minded bloggers handy to keep the volume up.  If you’re posting on your own, keep the post count down to two or three a day to avoid burning yourself out.

Dooce:

If you’re planning to write a personal (or Mommy/Daddy) blog, you have to check out Dooce.  This irreverent romp through one woman’s life will have you in stitches, crying or just wondering what in the world was going through the authors head at the time she was writing her posts for the day.

This blog was voted most popular blog overall for 2008, quite a testament to the power of being personable.  The fact that the author is irresistibly funny and nearly terminally honest doesn’t hurt any either. You should definitely look here for tips on keeping your readers interested.

Television Without Pity:

I’ll finish this chapter with living proof that you can cover any topic at all in a blog and become popular.  You don’t even have to be nice doing it!  Television Without Pity shows once and for all that having an opinion, and a rather strong one, will get you everywhere, but flattery will get you ripped to shreds.

The premise of this site is simple.  Tell everyone what you absolutely despise about a particular television program. It doesn’t matter if every other person that you know loves that particular program, on TWP you’ll find a very large and vocal group that agree completely that it’s complete cr*p.

The moral of this one is that you don’t have to be nice to have a lot of people read what you write.  You may however, want to be a bit judicious. (and carefully study libel laws)

Disclaimer

The tips in this chapter come with a price.  While I can personally guarantee that following the tips presented here will increase your traffic tremendously, you might want to ask yourself if you can handle the repercussions that come along with them.

Sitting in the center of a war of words will almost surely lead to a lot of negative commentary directed at you. You’ll need to quickly develop a  thick skin to handle the storm that this type of writing can cause.   Sure you’ll get visitors, but you’ll very likely make a few enemies in the process and the Internet has a very long memory.

There’s Traffic In Controversy

Controversy will bring in visits in a hurry. whether it’s because you’ve posted your view on a controversial subject or because what you’re writing is making people stop and ask “What did she just say?”, being in the middle of a controversy is a sure fire traffic builder.

There are several ways to approach this type of blogging, one aggressive and one passive:

The Aggressive Method:

In the aggressive form, you would poke around other blogs in your niche and find a topic that is being actively discussed, and which many people are discussing passionately.

Write a post on that topic that disagrees with or pokes fun at the popular opinion.  Then you go post a comment on a popular blog telling them that you disagree or think they are overreacting and add a link to your own post so that you can back up your comments.

Note: Don’t tell the blog author that he or she is an idiot for posting their opinion.  This is slander and is not tolerated well in the blogging community.  People who run around posting only inflammatory comments are known as trolls and will quickly be banned from posting comments at all.

While this will definitely drive traffic, it will also most definitely get you labeled as a troublemaker unless your posts are written extremely well.  If you’re going to go down this path, make sure you’ve done your research.  Failing to do so will make you a laughingstock.

The Passive Method:

The passive form of this method is less likely to get you branded as a nut-job or troublemaker, but may take a little more time to get traffic coming in.

In the passive form, you still write a post on a controversial topic.  That post must still be well written and you will still link to it in comments on other blogs, but you must take care to make sure that you are simply stating that there is another side to the discussion.

Remember; Going the passive route means that you are not trying to anger anyone with your actions.  The goal here is to stimulate discussion, not start an argument. (although that will probably still happen if your post is written well enough and people are passionate about he subject.)

Whether you choose to be passive or active, you have to be careful never to cross the line and personally attack or slander another blogger. The topics you go after depend on your niche, but make sure they are topics that already have heated discussions going on around them. the goal is to get some of that passion directed at your blog, not to make everyone so angry that they avoid visiting.

The Power Of Pomposity

Another way to bring a lot of scrutiny your way is to make claims that fall just short of impossible.  There are several very notable bloggers in the blogosphere right now that started this way; some by claiming to be the smartest guy on the block, others making outrageous claims as to their intelligence.

Be warned if you choose to go this route.  You will quickly be required to either prove that your claims are the absolute truth, or make it well known that your claims of being “the most intelligent person on earth” are just a catchphrase that you use to make your readers smile.

In either case, make sure that your posts are well written, extremely informative and researched to death.  Sub-par posts will get you labeled as a comedian at best and a fool at worst.

Snark Sells Almost As Well As Sex

If you are really interested in driving traffic to your blog and are willing to suffer a barrage of hate mails and unflattering comments, this last method may be for you.  Pick a celebrity or well known figure in your niche and rip into them on your blog.

Be vicious.  Point out their flaws, rate their wardrobe, comment on their mannerisms.  Be spiteful and hateful.  Stop just short of having legal action taken against you; then sit back and wait for the hits to roll in.

This method works.  I have personally used it in periods of slower traffic on my cooking blog.  In these instances I picked a television food celebrity whom I personally find  particularly annoying and simply laid into her every move.

Did it bring in traffic?  You bet it did!  it also brought out a slew of this particular celebrity’s rather rabid fan base who summarily vilified me in every venue they could find.  Damage control was a bit of an issue, but I eventually survived the fallout.

In total, that series of posts netted me upwards of 20,000 page views and about 100 comments, some of which had to be deleted in their entirety.  I can tell you with complete authority that this tactic does indeed work, it can also be the source of a lot of negative commentary directed straight at you.  You’ve got to be thick-skinned to weather it.