Rules are everywhere.  Rules exist for almost everything.

There are rules as to how you should behave. There are rules about how you layout a book. They simply are everywhere.

And there are also rules that exist for blogging.  Believe it or not.

Now you are probably thinking that these rules concern your blog, or your content, but they don’t. They are not so much about your blog but more about you as a blogger. The way you behave and what kind of mindset you have.

It Takes Time

If you want to become successful through blogging than this will definitely take time. You won’t become popular overnight. It’s a rule of blogging, a rule of the Internet. There is no immediate success.

Building a blog requires patience and persistence. Not everyone has the right skill set to become a blogger. If you think you have the skills than go ahead and create a blog. But remember, it will take time to get where you want to be.

It’s Not About You

That’s one of the most important things I have learned through blogging. It’s not about you.

Don’t think that you don’t need to help others or build relationships with them because you are a successful blogger. Almost the reverse is true. Once you have become well-known you need the help of others to keep you there.

To become successful anywhere in life you need to stop thinking about yourself. Stop thinking about what others can do for you, and start thinking about what you can do for others.

Learn to Give

It’s strange that some people think they don’t need to give in order to receive on the Internet. I have made the mistake myself. You definitely need to learn to give.

The best thing you can do is to help people. Help others with your knowledge and expertise.

And really, you need to give because you want. Because you want to help. Not because it will help your blog. Give because you care about other people. Everything you have done will come back to you, whether in a bad or good way.

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.
Peyton Conway March

You cannot gain happiness without giving it to someone else first. You cannot become famous blogging without making someone else famous first.

That got me thinking. One of my goals was to build a community around this blog.

In order to achieve this it’s essential to connect with each other. To help each other out.

The best way to help each other out as bloggers is to help them grow their blog. One of the ways that will help to grow a blog is by critizing it. By showing what could be done better.

That’s my idea for this article, help other bloggers out by showing them what they could improve on their blog.

How is This Going to Work?

Well first off everyone who is interested in creating a better blog should definitely participate. It doesn’t matter whether you have a popular or an unknown blog. Simply participate.

Here are all the steps you need to take:

• Take a Look At Other Blogs – This is the first step you need to take. Visit the blogs of the people who have already commented on this article. You can also take a look at this blog and decide on what you think needs to be changed.
• Comment About What They Need to Change – This is the second part. Simply post your thoughts as comments on this article. Be critical but not inappropriate. Write about what they could do better.
• Prepare to Get Advice Yourself – Once you have done the above steps other bloggers, including me, will take a look at your blog. We will tell you what you could improve about your blog.

So now you know what it’s about. To get this started I think the best way is to simply post your thoughts about this blog. What could you improve? What is irritating?

But again don’t only take a look at this blog. Once there are enough comments also take a look at the blogs of all the other people that commented on this post. Tell them what they could improve.

Take Action

In order for all of this to be effective I want you to change one thing about your blog. Apply the advice from someone else and use it to create a more successful blog.

You don’t need to apply everything of course. The point is simple. Improve your blog by listening to other people and getting to know their point of view.

Now share your point of view. What do you think about this blog? What could you improve on this and other blogs?

I feel like this is a little bit like Darren’s 31 Days to a Better Blog which is another great way to spice up your blog.

In fact, your guest posts should be some of your best articles. If they aren’t then you went wrong somewhere. But this is not the only aspect you should keep in mind about guest posting. In order to make a great first impression there are some things you should definitely keep in mind.

Take Your Time

You are not in a hurry to write a guest post. Take some time to find out what kind of articles are typical for the blog you chose to guest post on. Does every article include a picture? If yes, does the picture spread across the whole content section or is it just a smaller image aligned to the right or left?!

Answering these questions will help you to determine what the guest post should be like. Ultimately it will make a great impression on the owner of the blog. There is nothing worse than people sending you articles that have nothing to do with your blog or your readers. It simply shows that the person hasn’t taken time to find out what your blog is all about.

Go the Extra Mile

Especially on very successful blogs you need to go the extra mile. Doing that can mean a lot of things. What I like to do is to for example search for the type of category you would put your article in.

You need to do that because especially well-known bloggers don’t have a lot of time. By suggesting a category for the blogger you have helped him reduce some of the work which he would usually have to do himself.

Searching for articles on the blog to link to is another very effective way to help the blog owner. If you really think about it, guest posting is not only about getting exposure it’s also about relationships.

In the end going the extra mile will pay out.

Cover Unknown Territory

One of the best ways to make a great impression is to think about what the owner of the blog would be interested in. Don’t write about something that the person is already an expert in. By doing this you would only give the owner an opportunity to criticize your article.

Write about something that the person doesn’t know about. That way you will be sure to make a great impression on him. But that’s not the only advantage. You will also position yourself as an expert in the field. You know more then the blog owner, that means that he will be interested in your ideas and expertise.

What are your strategies to make a great impression through guest posts? Do you write a lot of guest posts?

Some people invest in stock, others in bonds. And even some invest in real estate. No matter what investment option you take your ultimate goal is it to earn a decent return.

The same applies to your blog. Now I don’t mean that you necessarily want to make money through your blog, some people do. But this kind of return can also simply be kind words or hearing that what you write is interesting.

Start to think of your blog as real estate. Every house has a price and so has your blog. There are actually web sites out there that tell you how much your blog is worth. Market it that way.

Invest in It

In order to have a nice house you need to spend some money on it. Without it, it’s hard to get it to a point where you and others will feel comfortable living in it. To get people to feel comfortable with reading articles on your blog you too need to invest some money in order to get a good design.

But not only stick to that. As a home owner you might need to learn about gardening. Just educate yourself. The same applies to a blog. You don’t know everything from the start, so buy books and visit seminars. Your followers will appreciate all the knowledge that you will gain over time.

Maintenance

Houses or apartments tend to get dirty over time. So you need to clean them.

Moderating comments, updating plugins and writing posts are all things that a good blog owner needs to take care of, in order to grow his blog. It’s the kind of maintenance a weblog needs.

Be a Nice Neighbor

Talking to neighbors and building up relationships with them is something that is essential in order to have a comfortable life in your neighborhood. You never know when you are going to need your neighbor’s help.

So treat them politely, foster your relationship with them and eventually when you need a favor, be it a real neighbor or a fellow blogger, they will be glad to help you out.

Measure its Size

A common concept with real estate is to measure a house or apartment by its number of square feet. The higher the number of square feet the bigger the house. Further there is a set square feet price depending on where the real estate is located.

Now why not do the same with your blog? One way to implement these ideas is to set a fixed price per square pixel on your blog. Let’s say you charge $1 per square pixel than someone wanting to place a 125×125 banner on your blog would have to pay $125.

It’s an easy way to calculate the different price you would charge for the different ad banner sizes.

What do you think? Are there any other concepts that are important but that I’ve missed?

The issue is not about failure itself, but about the way you react to it. Some people tend to get angry because they think they can’t get it right since they have failed once again.

On the other hand there are people who are grateful for making mistakes. Being grateful for failing is such an important practice. Why should being grateful for failing be a powerful routine?

You are about to find out!

Failure can accomplish many things such as getting depressed or even creating a successful business. Is that true? You bet it is.

Learning through Failure

Failure is not as bad as people think it is. Without it we would probably be still in the stone age hammering on a dead animal trying to crack it open. The reason behind this is that the only way humans learn is through failure.

You don’t learn how to shoot a ball at the goal by getting it right each time. No you learn it by completely missing the goal. And the more you miss it, the better you will become.

Your Inner Clock

Think of it this way. Your brain is like a little clock that needs to be adjusted to get the time right. If you always do it right, your internal clock will never get adjusted, i.e. you will never actually learn.

That of course doesn’t mean that I want you to go out and do everything wrong you could possibly do, no. You should be happy when everything is working the way it should since these are part of the good times of your life.

But the true meaning behind it is to not let you get bogged down through a mistake you’ve made. Why should a simple mistake be able to change your mood completely? You don’t understand it and me neither.

Thinking Differently about Failure

In order to become more successful in life and achieve the things you want, you need a new way of thinking about failure. Try to think of a mistake as a gift. It sets you on the right track. Before you might have been wrong but this mistake adjusted your internal clock. It simply made it a bit more precise.

Then the question is obvious for you. Why would you be mad at something that actually helps you to get further in life?! I actually don’t know but many people are.

Try practicing being grateful for mistakes, it will definitely change your attitude about life. Of course you can feel bad about a mistake, but always try to look at the positive side of it.

What do you think? Have you always thought of failure this way?

Today I want to talk about all the little neat things bloggers have to know about. All the skills bloggers have acquired throughout the years.

What is it that you need to know in order to build a successful blog? There are simply certain things you have to know about as a blogger.

Some skills are just essential. You own a web site, for that matter you need to be at least aware of the technology underlying it. It will make things much easier.

I’d like to think that most of the average bloggers are all-rounders. They can pretty much do everything, concerning blogging, on their own. It’s rather the people that make a living out of blogging that have specialized in a certain topic and let others take care of the rest.

Anyway, generally you could say that people that are blogging have developed lots of skills that they use on a daily basis. One of them is maneuvering around in the Internet.

Internet

Bloggers are highly efficient at using the Internet. Skilled ones are very capable of separating blogging activity from everything else. If you want to be as efficient as possible then you are not going to do some shopping while you are writing an article. I know it’s hard to do but when you work you do the same. And for some of us blogging is work. Of course you do not always work but you try to focus on getting things done. That’s your main goal.

Finding information fast has always been a strength of bloggers. They simply know their way around the Internet and are able to find the information they need fast. Not only can they find it fast, but it is very easy for them to just take an article apart and simply look at the essential points the article states.

Recent studies have shown that we spend a huge amount of time on the Internet. To you it comes as no surprise. But who would have thought 10 years ago that Amazon would become the biggest book retailer in the world? It seems so real but only a few years ago no one would have believed you.

Web Site’s Technology

Understanding the underlying behavior of web sites and how they interact is very essential. First of all it helps you when you need to fix a mistake. It’s the same as in a household. You don’t need to call the electrician if you know what’s wrong with the wire circuit and can repair it. You are simply not as dependent on others. Further it makes developing new tools or , in our case, web sites that much easier.

Bloggers also have lots of knowledge concerning web design. Most can build a web site from scratch. And even if they can’t they would be able to learn it quicker than other Internet users.

Marketing

As a web site owner you try to get more traffic to your web page. The same applies for blogs. In order to do that you become familiar with lots of strategies that help you in reaching this specific goal. Blog owners that make a living through their web site have spent a lot of time learning about marketing and its uses on the Internet.

Search engine optimization is just one of the Internet marketing techniques that is considered to be important when working with web sites. Others include affiliate marketing, which is what John Chow has specialized in. No matter what topic you write about, it is always good to know at least a little bit about marketing.

Image Editing

People use lots of images in articles. On the Internet this is especially the case as bandwidth is not important anymore. Therefore there is a huge demand for pictures that can be used in article. The only problem is that not every picture automatically suits your article. In order to have a great picture for an article you need to almost always edit it. There are rarely pictures that don’t need any modifications at all. Even if only small modifications need to be taken, they are still important.

Image editing is also essential in combination with other skills such as designing a web page. You cannot create a new web site layout without using any images. This is what nowadays makes up most of the web page (sadly since it has almost replaced content).

Interacting with People

I would like to believe that bloggers are far better at interacting with other people  then the average Internet user. As a web site owner you have to connect with others. It makes your web site more successful. If you just keep to yourself you will never get anywhere.

Communicating is therefore a big part of blogging. Even if it just means leaving a comment on a blog. By doing this on a daily basis you develop skills other people lack.

Writing

Writing articles is natural for bloggers. Some write more often than others, but really it doesn’t matter how frequent you post. No matter how many posts you write per months, you still need to write articles that impress your readers every time.

And believe it or not, most of the bloggers out there have acquired the skills to write great articles. Why else would you think are there so many articles out there dealing with improving your writing? It’s because people blogging are constantly improving themselves. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying that other people aren’t developing any new skills, I am sure they are, but it is just this set of skills that is very common among bloggers.

Conclusion

If you think you might need to learn about one of these topics then go ahead and do it. There is nothing wrong with acquiring new skills. I think it is the person that blocks himself from learning is the person that will lose in the long run.

Here are some web sites that might help you in developing your skills:

• Internet: The Internet as a whole is hard to cover as a blog but you might know blogs that offer advice on using the Internet more efficiently.
• Marketing: Yoast is a blog that talks a lot about search engine optimization. If you want to learn more about it then this is the right place to start from.
• Image Editing: PsdTuts is a great resource for tutorials on Photoshop. They basically cover everything from creating icons to photo manipulation.
• Web Site Design/Technology: Pro Blog Design is one of the best sources for information about web and particularly blog design.
• Interacting with People: I don’t really know a blog that focuses on the interaction between people. Still learning how to interact is easily done by just doing it.
• Writing: Copyblogger is a blog containing a wealth of information on writing in general. But it also talks about other topics in combination with writing, such as marketing.

Do you have these skill sets?  Do you agree as to whether they are important or not? What did we miss?

Along this article they will share advice as to what makes a blog successful.

The first piece of advice comes from John Chow, I am sure you know him, he makes lots of money through his blog.

Be Passionate About Your Topic

It’s hard to write about a topic you don’t like or know about. But lots of people do. They look up to people like John Chow who generates $40k through his blog on a monthly basis and think they can do the same. They do research on what he writes about and look closely at his blog. They choose the same niche John has chosen and start writing.

However that’s the wrong approach. Believe me, eventually you will run out of things to write about.

Just listen to John Chow’s advice:

The most important aspect of blogging is to enjoy the topic you’re blogging about. Too many blogger pick a topic not because they like it but because it’s the “hot” money making topic of the month. If you’re not passionate about your topics, you won’t stick with it long enough to make your blog a success.
John Chow

If you pick a topic you like you will not only write long enough but also more importantly, you won’t be able to write on a regular basis.

Michael Martin, owner of Pro Blog Design, sees a different aspect as essential to blogging, creating a blog you can be proud of.

Build Something You Are Proud Of

Blogging is a form of communication. Essentially it should please you to write and create content. If it doesn’t, then there is something you do wrong:

To me, the most important aspect of blogging is building something that you
yourself are proud of. I’m going to assume that you are blogging about a
topic you love. If that’s the case, forget about trying to please some
imaginary “average reader.” Just please yourself.

If your articles aren’t something that you are proud of and would read, then
don’t expect anyone else to. Same goes for your design. But if you build a
site that you yourself would love, then finding others will do too won’t be
hard.
Michael Martin

Creating a blog you love takes lots of effort. And this on a daily or weekly basis since you want your articles to uphold a certain standard of quality. But once you are used to the blog routines, blogging should become a lot easier.

Focus on Useful and Unique Content

Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips takes a different approach:

Blogging is nothing more than a form of web publishing. The most important aspect of blogging, therefore, has to be the content.

More specifically I always say that the content of successful blogs is both useful and unique.
Daniel Scocco

For Daniel it’s the content that creates a successful blog. Of course this is very true. Successful blogs always contain useful and also original content. Keep this in mind when building a blog.

The ultimate idea we can then get from these highly successful bloggers is that: You should love your blog and every article you publish. This also means rejecting or editing posts that you are not proud of. You further shape your blog the way you want it to be. Through design but also through articles, to the point  where you are truly proud of your blog.

In general I would divide the several types of bloggers into 3 categories, the first being what I would like to call social media chasers. The other two are hybrid and readership bloggers.

The Social Media Chasers

Jacob Gube or the guys from Smashing Magazine would fit into this category. Typically their articles are rather long and are made to become popular on social media web sites. One commonly used post type is that of creating lists, for example a list of 20 beautiful photographs.

These blogs have created an audience that is deeply involved in using social media. You can see this if you just take a look at the number of times their articles become popular on Digg and other web sites, it’s almost every single article.

Readership Bloggers

A perfect example of readership bloggers is Maki from Dosh Dosh. All he does is to write long article that cover a topic in detail. He aims at providing valuable content to his loyal readers which you can also see by the number of comments he receives on each article.

The difference to the social media chasers is that people like Maki do not aim at getting to the frontpage of Digg. The articles are also written with the reader in mind.

Hybrid Bloggers

Bloggers that do both of the above are called hybrid bloggers. They create articles destined for social media from time to time but they also create readership articles.

Depending on their feeling they decide whether to write for social media or “only” for their readership. Darren Rowse is probably a good example for that since he does both.

Conclusion

In the end I guess you have to make a decision as to what kind of blogger you want to become. Currently I would place myself in the hybrid blogger category but I aim at creating a loyal readership blog.

The problem with blogging is that it requires a lot of time. Most bloggers have at least 200 web sites that they check every day for new articles. This is of course not the only thing they do. They also have to talk to their followers and write posts. And of course they have to do research about topics, as blogging is about learning.

As you can imagine this requires a lot of time and that is why its so essential to increase your productivity while blogging. As most people use Firefox anyway why not increase your productivity through Firefox plug-ins?

In this article I will lead you through the steps to turn Firefox into a blogging stronghold.

First of all, to save time why not include a feed reader into Firefox using a plug-in? Here we go:

RSS Readers

To be faster in blogging you need a built-in RSS reader. There are actually several of those but I have only tried Brief and Wizz RSS.

Brief
Brief is the plug-in I am using. It is a good RSS reader and actually has all the options you would need. The only problem with it is that you have to import all your feeds into it as I haven’t figured out how to add feeds to it directly.

Wizz RSS
Another option might be to use Wizz RSS which is similar to the previous plug-in. Although I did use it for quite some time I would rather recommend using Brief.

Other RSS reader plug-in:

• feedly RSS News Reader

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is important for every web site because it helps in generating traffic. Firefox plug-ins will make your life a lot easier concerning all this stuff that you have to do on a daily basis for optimizing your rankings.

RankChecker
One Firefox plug-in that I am using is RankChecker from Seobook. It allows you to track which rank a certain web site has for a keyword on the three different search engines, i.e. Google, Yahoo and MSN. For example it might show you that the web site http://example.com is ranked first in Google for the keyword “internet marketing” .

SeoQuake
SeoQuake is an extension for Firefox that automatically shows you everything you need to know about a web site from the web developer side. It provides you with information about the current web site’s page rank, alexa rank and the number of back links.

SEO for Firefox
This is another plug-in from Seobook and it is actually similar to SeoQuake in that it provides information about Page- and Technorati rank, and lots of other metrics about a web site.

Other SEO plug-ins:

• Alexa Toolbar — if you want to increase your alexa rank then install this plug-in

Social Media

The next thing you need to do if you want to be more productive is to integrate social media into Firefox.

Shareaholic
This is a plug-in for link and content sharing. It adds an button to Firefox on which you can click whenever you want to share something. It is easy to use and highly customizable.

Twitterfox
As many people love to use Twitter, especially bloggers, I added a plug-in called Twitterfox. It makes tweeting a lot easier as it automatically converts links to tinyurl along with a lot of other things.

Image Plug-ins

Every blogger uses images in his articles, and some spent a whole lot of time trying to take a screenshot or decreasing a photo’s size. That’s where Firefox plug-ins come in handy.

Fireshots
Fireshots is a plug-in that creates screenshots but it is only available for Windows.  It lacks some features, for example you cannot take a screenshot of a region.

Screengrab
Screengrab is a Firefox extension for taking screenshots. In my opinion it does this pretty well but the quality of the pictures is not the best as with every non-commercial screenshot software.

Other image plug-ins:

• SnagIt — seems to be quite popular
• smush.it! — best plug-in for reducing the size of images. Take a look at it!

Writing

Most people blogging probably spend the most time on writing articles. Reducing this time even a little bit will greatly help you as you have time for other things and that’s what these plug-ins are for.

ScribeFire
This is an essential blogging plug-in as it is an browser integrated editor through which you can write posts and publish them immediately on your blog.

Copy Plain Text
Copy Plain Text is a very simple Firefox extension that let’s you just copy text but without any HTML or other code. It is pretty simple but people just love it.

Zemanta
One last plug-in you should know about is Zemanta. It suggests tags, photos, links and related articles while you write an article. The images are of course free from copy right infrigdment. Try it out!

Other writing extensions:

• QuickNote

Web Development

When blogging there are lots of things you need to do on a daily basis, may it just be fixing your Wordpress template. Doing this without ever leaving your browser might increase this process dramatically.

Web Developer
Web Developer is great especially for, well, web developers . With it you can change almost everything you want on a page without needing to change the source code.

Colorzilla
Colorzilla is used by web developers to measure the color of a region of a web site. It is easy to use, just click on the Colorzilla button and then on a region of a web site and it will present to you the color in various formats.

Measureit
Measureit is also a cool plug-in that might be helpful for web designers. You can use it to measure everything on a web site. Just click on the icon on the very left bottom and select an area. It will then provide you with the exact width and height of the area.

Other web development plug-ins:

• Extended Statusbar
  
• Firebug — one of the best web development extensions I’ve used

Wordpress

Wordpress is probably the most used blogging system. Using it you become highly productive but that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak it a little bit.

Wordpress Helper
Wordpress Helper is not a bad Firefox extension but I would not call it a plug-in. All it does, as far as I saw it, is to list the most up to date Wordpress version and also several Wordpress help pages.

Wordpress.com Sidebar
Another plug-in that might be interesting to you is Wordpress.com Sidebar. It adds a sidebar to Firefox through which you can log into Wordpress.com easily.

Further reading:

• 40+ Firefox Add-ons for High Speed Blogging
• 17 Firefox Extensions that Make Blogging Easy

Any suggestions on which plug-ins should be included? What plug-in did you not know about?

However there are some people that get paid for writing articles. A lot of people want to be making money via articles too, but most of them get stuck in the process because of one little issue. One of these problems is that people obsess about is the question on how much to charge for an article.

There are several factors on which you should focus when thinking about a fair price for an article:

• Your Spare Time Available
• Your Expertise
• Popularity of Your Web Site or Blog
• The Type of the Article
• The Length of the Article
• Research Needed for the Article?!
  

Sometimes it does not make sense to write articles to make money. For example if you do not have a lot of spare time available and your blog is generating a lot of revenue than it might not make sense to write articles for other people. Instead just focus on producing content on your own web site.

After having decided on an amount of money it is usually good to increase the price a little bit. The reason for that is that people think more highly of things that are more expensive. If you look at a watch and it costs $1000, you are probably going to think that it must be of high quality.

What would you add to the list?