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6 Ways To Come Up With Blog Post Ideas When You’re Blocked

September 16, 2011 Leave a Comment

We all experience bloggers block from time to time. We just don’t have ideas for fresh content round the clock but on the flip we side we WANT to offer our subscribers the content they’ve been waiting for. If you are known for your awesome content the stress can be pretty intense. Being a blogger without nothing to write about sucks! Here are 6 ideas that’ll help get the creative juices flowing and help come up with blog posts worth reading.

1) Use Your Daily Life As Inspiration

You might not be writing a personal blog, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring personal experience into the posts you write. If you can relate personal experience to the topics you write about, then do so. Sometimes you have to get creative, but your blog posts will be more interesting as a result!

2) Google It!

Why not Google the main topic of your blog and see what appears? You don’t want to copy any other blogs, of course, but one idea will often lead to another. Have a read around blogs in your niche – maybe even blogs outside of your niche – and see what they’re writing about. Either use this as inspiration for your own topics or write a direct response to what’s already out there. You can also skim through your RSS feed reader for post ideas.

3) Check Your Analytics

Checking your stats can leave you with a whole range of blog post ideas. Take a look at the keywords people are typing in to find your site. Chances are that some of the things they’re searching for aren’t on your blog yet. Why not use these keywords as ideas for future blog posts? You’ll also have the added benefit of knowing there’s a future audience for those posts!

4) Test Something And Post Your Results

If you’re really stuck for ideas, why not give yourself a challenge and post the results? For example, in the personal development niche this could mean making a gratitude list each day and writing about the effects. Or you could try a new fitness program and write about how you’re dealing with it. In most cases, readers in any niche love to read real life case studies!

5) Use Videos

Why not get surfing YouTube and see if there’s an interesting video you can share with your subscribers? Embed the video into a post where you give your own personal comments. This is a super-fast way to come up with content that’s still interesting.

6) Invite Readers To Ask Questions

What better way of coming up with content that your readers will enjoy than to invite them to ask questions? Write up a quick post one day asking them what they want to know, then post a follow up a few days later with all the answers. This last method is also an excellent way to connect with your audience.

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Content Ideas and Tips for Summer Blogging Doldrums

July 7, 2011 1 Comment

Quite often in the summer we might want to take it easy like our school age kids. We want to sleep late, eat ice cream for breakfast, and spend some time watching mindless TV. Heck it is the summer after all!

There is of course nothing wrong with deciding to slow down and enjoy your summer but if you find that you just can’t find the desire to blog then you might be feeling some pain in your pocketbook. Here are some ideas to get you out of a summer blogging funk and make the process just a bit easier… so you can get back to taking it easy of course.

Scan Your RSS Feeds – Quite likely you subscribe to a number of blog RSS feeds. This allows you to keep up with your favorite personal blogs and also any blogs related to your online business niches and passions. Whenever you need a little topic inspiration scan through your RSS feeds for ideas, even going back several months if you have to. Surely there is something there you can use to inspire your own blog post.

Use Facebook to Get Feedback – One of the best ways to get content for a blog post is to pose a question to your Facebook friends or page fans. You can use their responses to create a new post. For example you could ask on your fan page how people prefer to cook Rhubarb and use the ten best responses in an article titled The 10 Most Delicious Ways to Cook Rhubarb. Food might not be your niche but you get the general idea. You can also take Facebook fan questions that are asked on your page and answer by writing a new blog post.

Visit Niche Forums – If their are any public forums or communities for your niche those are a great place to get content ideas. You can see first hand what people want to know and what they are concerned about.

See What Your Visitors Searched For – Every good blog should have a search function and there are several plugins available that track what your visitors searched for when they visited your blog and how many search results were returned. When you see searches that have few or zero returned results then you know what to blog about!

Seek Out Interviews – Contact people that you admire in your niche and ask if you can send them some interview questions via email. Most times they will happily answer your questions in return for a little exposure on your blog and they provide you with fresh, relevant content. It is a win win for both parties.

Ask for Guest Posts – See if any of your networking contacts or blogging friends want a chance to spotlight themselves on your virtual real estate with a blog post. Again, they benefit from the exposure and you get new content.

Scan Old Magazines – Another great place to source ideas is in old print magazines. This will of course depend greatly on your niche but you can find great ideas and inspiration for your home decor blog, for instance, by looking through back issues of decorating and design magazines.

Ask Your Readers – If you are lacking topics to blog about ask your readers via post, email list, or Facebook fan page about what topics they would like to see covered. You may just end up with a nice long list to work through.

Purchase Content – During the summer you might want to outsource a couple blog posts per week so that you can prioritize your time. This can be done by buying PLR (and editing it to ft your needs) or hiring a ghostwriter. Fiverr.com is great place to find writers for this purpose… just make sure to look for users with lots of good feedback. Once you find a good writer that you trust, you can breathe a little easier.

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How Much Money Are We Talking Here?

April 25, 2009 3 Comments

MoneyIn the last few months I have gotten several emails from perspective mom bloggers who want to know what kind of money can be made blogging. Most kinda dance around the specific question I KNOW they want to ask but some come right out and ask. How much money do you make EXACTLY and do you think I could make that much too?

I think all to often we see articles and advice that you can make money blogging but then when moms go out and try it they may  only sew a few dollars trickle in. They get discouraged and they think they have been duped or that it is a matter of luck. Some quit blogging and others continue but are highly dubious of the moms who “claim” to make real money. I know I felt that way at one time. I saw Internet Marketers online claiming to make upwards of 5-10 grand a month and when I managed to squeak by with only $50 after busting my butt behind the screen…I was skeptical.

I am not skeptical any more but I am realistic. Some of the figures floating around are not going to be within the reach of the average blogger. Much of it is about having the right niche at the right time. Much of it is about having the right voice and the right writing style. BUT much of it is still about working hard, finding a unique voice and site, testing and tracking your efforts, and always looking for ways to put your content in front of more and more eyes.

I saw this article online today that addresses a WSJ claim that bloggers who have 100,000 uniques per month make on average $75,000. In my personal opinion that figure is crap. I am sure some do make that much but they must have a super hot niche with hot affiliate products to promote. That just cannot be the “average” IMO. I had 88,000 uniques to just ONE of my sites last month and that would theoretically make me $66,000 richer this month. Yeah… that didn’t happen. If that HAD happened I would be blogging right know from my villa in Tuscany or my condo in Costa Rica.

So how can you gauge the amount of money you can potentially make? Heck if I know!

Well, actually I saw a much better model on Frederic Patenaude’s site a few weeks back. I like Frederic because he makes a very good living online in the raw foods niche. He also does some business to business stuff but mostly I see him promoting health and information products so he is closer to my “niche” than a guy who promotes IM stuff. The IM niche (Internet Marketing) model is not very relevant to me and what I do.

Anyway in his graph, in the video on that page, you see the general figures you can make depending on the size of your list. He claims that if you have 3000 readers you can make about $1500-3000 per month. For 5000 readers the number is $2500-5000 and for 10,000 readers the figure is $5000-10,000.

I really like this chart but that may be because I have had results that mesh with it. My list number and monthly income falls within the second tier and I DO see gains when my reader numbers go up. For me the key is having regular readers and also still having that search engine traffic that comes from relevant, focused, content. Those visitors don’t always subscribe but they DO buy and they do increase ad network revenues.

So overall I find it better to work on building your lists (subscribers) rather than just trying to drum up high traffic numbers. The money is in the list.

Filed Under: Blogging
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