We should not forget blogs were originally web logs. An electronic diary documenting the journey of many important and un-important people alike. Whilst blogs have evolved to be online class rooms with teahcer (blogger) and student (reader) transferring knowledge does not mean that journeys are any less educational and in most circumstance more entertaining. Its been proven that most people learn far better from stories and anolgies as opposed to facts and figures. So how can you become a master of your niche without knowing anything? Document your Journey. I know I know it seems like straight forward advice but I come across very few truly journey blogs these days and its a niche within a niche that is largely untapped. So here are some tips to document your journey and access this untapped market:

Admit you dont know it all

The first thing to do is admit in your post/blog/about page that you don’t have all the answers. No-one does so this is a fairly easy step. But its important that your readers understand so that they can understand the context of your post. Of course its equally important to emphasis what the reader will benefit by reading your post as simply telling them there are gaps in your knowledge is not overly endearing and doesn’t exactly present the image you wish to portray. The added benefit of this type of admission is the fact that you are more closely related to your readers than many of these experts could possibly be because (whilst they won’t admit it), the experts cant possibly remember what its like starting out.

Experiments are killer titles

There are hundreds of post about properly naming your post. There is top 10 post, using numbers in titles, reverse psychology (i.e. don’t read this if…) and many more types of titles that can get your post or article some interest and ultimately more readers. But for me and many other web users the titles I find hardest to ignore is the experiment title. “My such and such experiment” creates such an unbelieveble urge within to find out how the experiment went and if the author was successful. You could also throw in “my experience” titles, and “what I have learnt from” titles as great bait for readers. The best part is that it requires no great knowledge to produce one of these posts.

Infomative post pose further questions

Recently I read one of Darren Rowse’s many great post How to pitch to bloggers – 21 tips. Suffice to place a link to the page on my blog their wasn’t really much I could add to the topic particularly since I have very little experience pitching and being pitched too. However I can take this infomation and provide it to my readers form another angle. You see such informative post just raise further question in the minds of most readers. How well does it work? Which tips are the most important? Will it work for the average person? Who will accept these pitches? If I want to know the answers its a fair bet that most of my readers do as well. By trying to answer these questions, you provide content to your readers that will help you become a master of your niche.

Newbies every day

Another thing to consider is that many of the experts of any niche have often become disconnected from the newbies. Its human nature to forgot your origins and your knowledgebase at the time when you first started. I remember how much trouble I had setting up a website with a host all those years ago when I first started and now take that knowldge for granted. So whilst I ramble on about creating popular blogs thier is a niche under me to explain to the newbies how to set up a website and host it which would probably be best coming from someone who has newly mastered the skill. If I try to write a post on it I could not remember the exact stumbling blocks I faced at the time and the infomation would not be well targetted. So it doesnt matter what niche you are writing for you can be assured there is plenty of other newbies looking for advice on some of the simpler tasks and it is an untapped market that should not be forgotten.

People need to connect

Being a successful blogger is all about connecting with your readers. I have mentioned Yaro and Darren a few times throughout this blog and I think of them as friends. This is despite the fact I have never met both of them and the only contact I have had is a few emails back and forth, commenting on thier blogs and thier about page. But if they recommend a product or service I generally pay attention, not because they know everything but because I feel like I can trust them. Now if you happen across a blog and its first post is a definitive guide to anything it can be difficult to connect. Who is this blogger telling you that they know everything when you don’t know them. Its like the strangers who walk up to you in the street and give you parenting advice. I don’t know you and as such I will politely ignore what you are saying. I would even go as far as saying that it could almost be detrimental to a new blog to be such an expert so early. How can a new reader validate your claims of infomation with nothing to compare it too. Don’t get me wrong these pillar post are critical to the success of many blogs but I feel early on you want to connect with your readers first before telling them whats right and wrong. A few humble post on mistakes you have made and lessons you have learned is a far more agreeable way to start a new relationship.

Enjoy the benefits

I have touched what you should do and a little bit about why you should do it. But there really is an endless number of benefits to this type of blog. The first and by far the most important for me is finding new content for my blog. Like everyone the amount of knowledge I actually have is very little. When you compare it to what I dont know then the amount of knowledge I contain is embarrisingly trivial. If you write about what you know and get about 1000 posts out of it, then the amount of post you can get out of what you don’t know is infinate. So even if you don’t take all the advice from this post at least consider writing about things you don’t know to get extra great content.

Having content is great but my favorite part of having this content that each time I write a post I learn something unique and valuable. If I wasn’t writing these experiments there are probably hundreds of things I would never try. If I buy something and test it out and it doesnt work I can justify the purchase as a learning experience and content for my blog. If you write long enough about things you have learned, experiments etc you become a master of your niche by default just becasue your knowledge base grows so much.

I mentoned that you need to connect to your readers. Well this writing style is far more intimate than the teacher/student relationship of most blogs. Generally you will get far higher comment counts, more questions from readers and your readers are more actively involved in your blog. So when it comes time to sell a product that has helped you immensily and possibly proven through previous post do you think the chances of your readers buying it are higher?

But the benefits don’t just stop with you. Your readers will also benefit immensily (which is the aim of the blog when you think about it). The content is written for them, from thier perspective and can often uncover alot of mistakes which they would of inadvertenly commited down the track as well. If you publish the mistakes you made with an experiment about gaining traffic, losing weight or training a dog the reader not only gets a list of what works but also what does not which can be equally beneficial.

So don’t be afraid to look as though you don’t have all the answers. Chances are that you don’t and you just look conceited and shallow if you try to appear otherwise. Incomporating mistakes you have made, lessons you have learned and experiments you have tried can provide more useful infomation to your readers than you think. More importantly this type of infomation is more endearing to a reader and is an excellent way to create strong and lasting relationships with your reader. Do it long enough and you will probably evolve into a blog which can provide expert advice simply from the amount of experiences you will have and you can become a master of your niche. .

Thankyou for sending the same comment on everysingle one of my posts. I can only assume that you really like my work and every post on the site particularly because you mention you like my writing style every time. However when I went to reciprocate the favour your site featured pictures of naked women. Were you aware of this? Some of the pictures even have women and men trying to make babies. I was horrified and after searching through every page on your site for a contact page or exit button, I finally managed to close down the site after running out of moisteriser and tissues.

My friend Kevin told me that I had in fact, visited a pornography website, but it was OK because he would ban them soon in Australia anyway. Still it hurts me not to be able to let you know how much I appreciated the sentiment of your comments on my post. It was lucky you sent the comments though when you did because I accidently installed Askimet and now I dont get many comments at all. And lots of the comments I do get, actually have the nerve to argue with me, provide more infomation or an opposing point of view like I actually allow comments for discussion or something. Not you though, you just re-affirm my self-confidence, whack about 20 links in there and be on your way like a true anonymous hero. You are a real nice guy or gal and its hard to find these types of people online.

I wonder if you know or are related to some of the other people who comment on my site. You all write extremely similar messages and you are very successful because you have so many websites. I only have a couple but then again I don’t comment on many blogs so that is probably why. I have heard people on forums and stuff bad mouthing you for saying nice things about so many people, but I suspect that they are just jealous because you would have so many friends and lots of money compared to them. I reckon you should video yourself writing all these nice messages and post it on youtube. You could be like that guy that gave free hugs away and he is super famous and everyone loves him now. Why do people who want to hug everyone always look like they are afraid of the shower? Anyway if you get as successful as the dirty, hippie, hugging guy, then maybe hallmark or someone will give you a job in writing nice messages and you can be even more rich and popular, if that is even possible.

Cheers
Adam

Fake it until you make it is very apt when it comes to blogging. Particularly in my case when I am blogging about blogging. Only one way to get experience in this industry and that is to blog. So to avoid the proverbial splinters from sitting on the fence too long here are some tips to give you more confidence in your writing.

• Whatever point you make, fight for it and stick to it.

There will always be nay-Sayers and people who don’t agree with you. You don’t write your post for them, you write your post for people who don’t know much about the topic or who would like to see your perspective on a topic. Constantly undermining your own point with counter-points, other arguments or possible flaws destroys your article and provides no value to the reader. Obviously if you are writing a post on straight-up facts and are proven to be wrong then fighting for your (wrong) point just makes you look silly.

• If unsure, Make Sure

If you are writing on a topic and not certain about the point you are putting across then its time to research. If you don’t want to research then don’t bother writing a post because no-one cares about an uneducated point of view. If research can not fully substantiate your point then look for other bloggers, people and organizations that share your point of view and use them as reference. Like that english test you did in high school you are never really wrong if you can find sources or evidence to back up your point (but you may be ill-informed).

• Use logic as much as possible

Ever hear the saying “common sense is not very common”. Our society is becoming far worse when it comes to the use of common sense or logic and as a blogger be sure you don’t follow in this path. Many problems can be avoided and points of views formed just by applying some logic to a problem or topic. Sit back, take a deep breath and work through your point of view logically (which usually involves evidence) and be comfortable that your point will stand up to the logic test.

Following these three steps has given me a new feeling of confidence in my post, displays me in a greater light to my readers and I have had very little criticism or opposing ideas because it follows a logical sequence. So if you suffer from low-confidence be sure to work on it post-haste or be doomed to mediocrity.

• Check and respond to my emails. Always hoping for paypal payments, updates from my programmers and advertisers contacting me about the site.
• check site and moderate comments
• Check Adsense to see how much I made
• Check analytics to see I’m my traffic has improved.
• Check DP to see if I have any responses or offers
• ATM check flippa to see how my auction is going.
• Check clickbank
• Check Cpalead and other lead services
• Check my fantasy football team

And it does not matter if I got everything I wanted or nothing at all after I finish my morning ritual

…I Immediately feel Flat.

And I wonder if anyone else goes through this daily nightmare. I sit and stare at the computer and unless something urgent comes up I start thinking “what do I do now….” Usually after an hour or so of just looking at various websites trying to muster the enthusiasm to do something, I will begin functioning again normally and start working so that my results tomorrow exceed today’s.

But I have to end this practice. I am going to stop wasting an hour of my time, when I am at my peak and achieve nothing. I can’t not do my daily routine as the anticipation kills me and besides there could be items within that require my immediate attention. Instead I am going to slightly alter my ritual.

The answer is to set out my daily goals before I do anything. if something comes up after I set my goals I can still adjust them accordingly. But if nothing comes up (which is the norm) I have an action plan following my ritual immediately effectively eliminating the time I waste. For more info on setting these goals check out my post on Setting effective short term goals.

You see I am sort of a perfectionist, for lack of a better term. For some reason when I come up with a seemingly unimportant idea for a post that can go straight into my general content, by the time I have finished, the article has become blogging gold that needs to be rewarded with a position fitting of its quality as a headline or featured article. Somehow I take a simple straight forward idea or tip that would be useful to you my readers and as I began to explain the tip I take so many tangents and add so much content that the original purpose has been superseded by a far more important one. Its like writing a haiku with 30 syllables it no longer can be used for its original purpose.

I realise I have now come across completely arrogant and conceited as a blogger who is unable to write anything less than absolute quality. Whilst that is true, it is not my intention. This post has two intentions; the first to be a post that will simply be placed straight into my content and far away from the higher office of the great articles. The second is to provide advice for those of you with similar issues and give ideas on how to write content filling articles for your blog, because post frequency is important but also quite difficult.

Actually I probably should not be giving advice on post frequency and content fillers as I am notoriously bad at these myself. Also to go into detail would make this article useful and deserving on being promoted at the top of my home page which is definitely not my intention. So I will leave it at that and you can be sure you will be able to find more information about content filers in my headline section in the near future.

I have a friend who has written a 1500 page novel, edited it countless times and is now trying to get it published. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with his dedication and patience to complete such an enormous task. As a blogger I am lucky to have enough patience and dedication to read all my emails without being sidetracked with something else. An analogy of blogging I often use is the primary school classroom. The authors and novelist are sitting on the bean bag in the corner quietly reading their books and us bloggers are running around the room, screaming, hitting other kids, throwing toys, opening drawers, and frustrating the hell out of the teacher. So how does a blogger overcome this inherent ADD issue. The answer is setting short term goals.

A lot of bloggers write about the importance of goal setting. Most of this time is spent really emphasising long term goals and the introspective search required to create these goals. And this is an important part of the blogging process. If you have no long term goals you can quickly lose perspective and purpose and your blog quickly collapses into mish-mash of random thoughts.

Many bloggers also write about medium and short term goals as well. Setting targets that make logical steps to help you reach your long term goals. But even these goals are too vague and too lofty for the ADD blogger. We need a new goal setting strategy that will keep us in our seats long enough to avoid being distracted by that squirrel in the tree outside. I call them Micro-term goals (micro-goals) and I use them religiously.

A micro-goal has to be so short and so succinct that the only way to not achieve the goal is to make the conscious effort of not completing it. Because of the scope of the goal, lifestyle pressures should no longer be a factor in achieving (or not achieving) your goals. In fact micro-goals are so short-term that I would write out new goals every day and in some instances several times a day. So if you want to accomplish something tangible in your day as opposed to checking your AdSense stats every 5 minutes, here are some guidelines to setting up useful micro-goals:

The goal can not take more than a day to complete.

Obviously its not a micro goal if it takes longer than a day, but it becomes open to failure if you have to sleep on it. Instead break up the goal into several micro goals, half to do one day the other half the next day. Your chances of successfully completing your goal increase dramatically.

Has to be specific

No more vague goals, no more “I will write three articles today”, “I will make 10 forum post” or “I will comment on 10 blogs”. Be as specific as you possibly can. This does require a bit of research though. I will use the first quote as the example here: “I will write three articles today”. If you don’t know what your articles will be written on your first and only goal for the day should read “I will think of three article ideas in one hour and write some quick notes”. After you complete this task you then reset your goals. I will write article 1 in x hours. I will write article 2 in x hours. I will write article 3 in x hours. You have now made a vague short term goal into 4 specific easily measured micro-goals.

Should be written down at the start of every day

The keywords here are “written down”. Don’t just have a list of goals in your head. Despite the fact you probably won’t remember the goals it is far easier to ignore a goal that is not written down. Top personal growth experts always recommend sharing your goals with friends and family to add extra motivation on yourself. Obviously you don’t need to share the mundane details of your daily blogging life to friends and family, but you must consciously acknowledge to yourself the goals you have set for yourself.

The other reason why its so important to write them out at the start of the day is subconscious thinking. In exams its is recommended to read through all the questions first before you start answering any. Why? Because your brain will subconsciously process this information (come up with answers) the whole time during your exam. The same can apply with your micro-goals. Writing them down in the morning has you subconsciously working on them the entire day.

Must complete start to finish
Every goal you set must be completed from start to finish. This shouldn’t be too difficult if you set your goals properly because they should be so specific that you can’t really stop half-way. Despite that this is a rule you should not break. Do not go jumping from goal to goal, starting all and completing none. Micro-goals are designed to keep you focused for short periods of time and maximise your chances of actually completing some of your goals.

So put away your blogging Ritalin and just focus on setting yourself micro-goals every day. Each simple goal you reach is a step in the right direction for you and your blog and will ultimately bring you closer to realising your long-term goals. To maximise the effectiveness you really need it to become a habit of your daily blogging (or life) and your day will be filled with achievement as opposed to disappointment. So set yourself a short-term goal to set micro-goals every day for the next week and reap the benefits.

1. Post Reviews

We all know of reviews and have probably heard a hundred times to do a website, business or product review when you can’t think of anything to write about. But something I often do is an post review. This isn’t “the post was good because…” or anything as trivial and pointless as that. Its probably best to review a post of the most respected bloggers in your niche as this will have the side effect of linking to quality content and building a relationship with important bloggers. Every post on the Internet, no matter how well its written and how extensive it is will raise further questions in the minds of the readers.

Let me give you an example. Say a blogger writes a post about 10 tips to help you improve something. Generally the detail is fairly light in these type of posts. So its a safe bet that the readers will think of some if not all of the following questions:

• Are there any more tips that can help?
• Which tips are the most important?
• How exactly can I implement some of these tips?
• Why, do these tips help me improve?
• What does the blogger know that makes these tips valid?
• I could keep adding more questions but I think you get the point.

So if you read a quality post you can simply brainstorm the questions it raises in your own mind, then write a post answering these question. Be sure you include a link to the post to give your post some context. Easy, quality content that builds a relationship with a respected blogger, you can’t do much better than that.

2. News

When I say news I am not referring to just your industry specific news. That is an obvious source of new content where you can simply republish news that is related to your niche. I am speaking of the more generic prime-time variety of news. Whilst it may not be completely relevant to your niche it only requires a small amount of imagination to make a connection. In my case I could make the following post from the news at the moment:

• The war in the middle east = the search engine wars
• The dog that went missing and was found years later = finding old content and re purposing it.
• The winter Olympics = achieving gold with your blog (or another 100 possible post)

Its not hard to think of heaps of ideas this way. Personally I like to include the prelude to the post when writing it, it gives more context to your post and helps your readers relate to what you are proposing.

3. Ebooks

Most of the best bloggers offer a free ebook as bait to subscribe to their site. These ebooks are usually unbelievably good and packed full of useful information and tips. However they are also very lengthy and as such much of the incredible information gets largely unseen. Normally when I read an ebook, I have notepad open and jot down points that interest or can help me as I go along. Remembering 20 key-point and messages is far easier and more effective then remembering 200 pages of content. But for the purpose of this post you should use this same tactic to find plenty of great post ideas from one ebook.

Recently I read an ebook on boosting your adsense profits which included really interesting and useful passages including adsense mistakes, best adsense blocks, and the growth of video ads. In future I may re-write and add to these passages to create new post for this blog which my readers will appreciate. Of course its important to give credit to the original author and try not to just copy and paste the information you want to maintain your voice throughout all your post and give your particular perspective on the information.

4. Your Life

Similar to using news for post in your blog, you should not underestimate how interesting your life actually is. If you have kids they are an unbelievable source of information as you watch them learning the world that surrounds them. But kids are not the only ones who learn something new every day. The benefit of this type of writing is that you also get to tell your readers a little bit more about yourself and build trust with them as they begin to know you the person, not just you the blogger. This type of trust builds loyalty, repeat traffic and ultimately sales.

Don’t worry I am going to provide you without some examples of this lateral thinking technique. Its only 9:30am as I am writing this and so far its been a fairly inane day for me but I can think of a couple of post ideas still.

• I woke up late but had luckily organised everything I need for today, last night = How proper organisation allows you to be an effective blogger. I could write a number of tips of how to organise a blogging schedule and the importance of being organised in becoming an effective blogger.
• I have had to communicate with several older members of our society (which has been difficult) so far today = How to effectively communicate with all your readers not just your clones. I could explain several communication barriers faced by potential readers including using jargon, small text, jokes, and images and explain the negative impact this could have on your readers.

5. Things you would like to learn

Last item on this list may also be the most beneficial for you as an individual. It doesn’t matter how much you know about any subject if you give it some thought, I bet there is hundreds of things you would like to learn about your subject. Well as a blogger its a perfect opportunity to make the effort and learn something new because not only will you grow as a person you will get some great content out of it as well. Once you embark on your learning experience the post takes care of itself. “What I learned about…”, “My experiment on” and “My X Journey” are some simple templates you can use for this type of post.

So you really have no excuse to run out of ideas for post. It takes a little bit of lateral thinking but there is an amazing number of different post you can potentially write if you want to be a little creative. This list only covers the more unique ways to come up with post ideas and does not include the standard list, interviews, resources etc, that you hear every where else. If you consider them as well you have enough ideas for posts to last you a lifetime.

If you have any other unique tips for coming up with post ideas please let everyone know in the comments below. We will all grow as bloggers this way.

Which Brings me to the question; will anybody like me?

I have included the number of followers and subscribers as I want this blog to remain as transparent as possible. At the time of writing this I have 8 twitter followers and 0 rss subscribers. Publicly promoting how popular (or in my case how unpopular) you are is always a risk because you could potentially scare visitors away. Low numbers can say to visitors that your blog is rubbish and very high numbers can potentially say that you are too big to care about the individual (the visitor).

Regardless I will move forward in my attempt to humiliate myself further. For all of those out there, who are reading this, and who have a soul, I beg you to help me get started and become a subscriber and a follower. Good Karma surely awaits.

Whilst moderating these comments I have noticed trends with spammers trying to get their links published on my site. Some are plain stupid, some are completely irrelevant to the site and some are copied and pasted across many sites. I think the funniest part of the following list is all of these comments have been collected from my site within the last 14 days only. I am sure many of you have had similar experiences and I expect some more classic comments added in my own comment section below (don’t worry I will approve these ones).

So here are the top 10 Dumbest Blog Comments:

1. Huh?

Does this type of comment ever work? I doubt any moderator would even publish it, but say if it does get published, who will click on the link? And if they click on the link they get taken to a site that doesn’t exist. So whats the point?

bAHKuh pzavtjgqropq, [url=http://apxveswqcfdy.com/]apxveswqcfdy[/url], [link=http://gqcobwczfhtp.com/]gqcobwczfhtp[/link], http://vhlrmwvzfcec.com/

2. Do what I say

Most advertisers ask politely for business but not this commenter. Reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I keep thinking the last line will read “watch it or I will blow your brains out”.

Watch this video online or download it:
[url]http://youtubelink.info/angelina[/url]
Enjoy it.

3. Flattery will get you everything

Except a comment on my blog. I particularly like the tangent the commenter takes that leads to nowhere. Perhaps a legitimate comment that just sounds like spam?

Hi – really good website you have made. I enjoyed reading this posting. I did want to publish a comment to tell you that the design of this site is very aesthetically pleasing. I used to be a graphic designer, now I am a copy editor for a marketing firm. I have always enjoyed working with computing machines and am attempting to learn computer code in my free time (which there is never enough of lol).

4. Huh? Oh the shotgun approach.

Similar to the first comment this one doesn’t follow a whole lot of logic. I think this is my favorite comment with the keyword stuffing of 4 different opportunities mixed with letters, numbers and characters (like a good password).

ine casino kah reliastar life insurance 952418 health insurance gshx home insurance =-(((

5. Specific Flattery

Perhaps the commenter has a better chance of their link being published if they add links to my own blog several times. Completely unnecessary as I would have approved the comment based on the sage advice they provide “There is not much to state except the following universal truth: Stuff happens, then more stuff happens. Stuff will continue to happen until stuff stops happening.”

I am to a great extent impressed with the article I have just read. I wish the author of http://www.scribblescratch.com can continue to provide so much worthwhile information and unforgettable experience to http://www.scribblescratch.com readers. There is not much to state except the following universal truth: Stuff happens, then more stuff happens. Stuff will continue to happen until stuff stops happening. I will be back.

6. Everyone likes list

Keyword stuffing in comments don’t work as you can see above. But perhaps if I create a nice looking list of completely unrelated and inappropriate keywords my comment will be approved. Kudos for the formatting and the effort of adding every type of spam related content available; adult, ringtones, downloads, cracks, wallpapers and mobiles (all in one list!).

Hi,
Today I found a good site. It is on the network by the following keys:
lotr ringtones
garmin mobile blackberry megaupload
free sex mobile horse
ring women video
wwe ring announcer
seeyou mobile 3 1 crack
health conditions due to cell phones
lesbian clips mobile
text message alert tones
free shyla stylez mp4 mobile porn
army airborne cell wallpaper
sexarabe mobile
Hope, it will help you too.

7. Social Butterfly

Oh so you have bookmarked and told your friends. I think there should be some sort of remuneration for such a loyal reader. Oh you use the name “free sex” for your comment and link to an adult website. At least you loved my webmaster related site.

It is a excellent ?nternet site.
I have bookmarked the page and I will notify my friend about it.
Thankfulness

8. No….Thankyou!

Not saying anything except what I just wrote …and that…and that…and that…you get the idea.

Nice Post Thanks.

9. I have a Question!

Looks like the commenter gets their 2 year old to mash the keyboard and then tags their website on at the end. Wish I could of been more helpful to them and answered their question though.

??5???? ?? ????????O(?_?)O??~????????? ???www.cn-clothes.com?

10. Vague is the new vogue

I think the comment subject has been discussed before, and it is an important subject we should all consider. Its funny because I was talking to another webmaster recently about the subject of the comment and this comment was exactly what I needed. Adios.

Ola, nice blog you?ve got here. I really liked reading your post. I accidentally found it this morning and thought it was interesting, so it led me to post a few words. I have a feeling there will be others who most likely share your opinion concerning this subject. So, I?ll return soon when I find extra time to view more. This is funny, but I was just calling my room mate regarding this subject, so this post was just what I needed. I will link to this website and find the rss as well. Thanks very much

On a side note what is the connection between comment spam and question marks. Looking through this list it makes me think I have been using question marks incorrectly at the end of questions when they have far more uses then that obviously. Don’t forget to add some of your best blog comments as well.