Working Blogger

I know, I know … most likely you all know that, seeing as how I haven’t posted here for ages. But Working Blogger is now on temporary hiatus. I’m playing around with a few ideas for this blog - have one specific idea that I’ve been exploring.

So, until then, you can catch up with what I’m doing over at Adventures in Net Marketing!

Not that long ago, I wrote about the flexibility of blogging and how much I liked the ease with which you can try out new things, and yes, change your mind.

I’m reminded again today of this flexibility, and the power it has to encourage creativity.

I’ve mentioned in the past that Chrissie and I have been working on a new blog together. We already collaborate on a blog and it’s so much fun having a partner that we have a couple of other projects in the works, including this new blog that we had originally planned to launch the beginning of June.

But recently, we’ve both decided to concentrate our efforts on our existing sites and blogs - we are both seeing pleasant increases in traffic on older, aged domains - and it really didn’t feel like it was the right time to put more time and effort into the blog project we’ve been working on.

So for a while, we agreed to put the blog on the side, to be picked up when the time felt right.

Last week, we hit on an idea that lets us blog together, with the same sense of fun and ease that GadgetChick brings us, but in a totally different area. And with just a few tweaks, we realized that we could unshelve our shelved blog project and use it for our new idea - by giving it a totally different, much more fun, far less serious theme.

So now, we’re going for the fun of it all. I don’t even know if we’ll “launch” our new blog properly. Diving in and doing feels right with this new blog. Watch for the link here soon!

Mike Sansone over at ConverStations has a post about his blogging schedule, and I really like his idea of doing a “blogger’s warm-up” first.

Before he begins writing, he has a commenting warm-up routine:

“before I even think about my own post, I invest 15-20 minutes responding to comments on my blog and commenting on other sites. I find this gets me in a blogging rhythm. While commenting - a post formulates that I can bang out in another 20-30 minutes.”

After I read this, I realized I’d been doing something similar myself - just not consistently. But I find that making comments on other blogs and answering comments on my own blogs really does get me into the “blogger’s zone” - ideas for posts will come to me even if I hadn’t had a clue what to write.

I think it’s the combination of reading through my feeds, and also putting my fingers to the keyboard and getting them going. There’s a rhythm that just comes to you as you go tap tapping away in answer to something someone else has written.

Getting into that zone is always a nice feeling.

Mind you, I’m not an early morning runner, and so I doubt I’ll ever find myself beginning a commenting warm-up at 4:45 a.m.!

Yehuda has a great post up on How I Became a Professional Blogger. His post shows how blogging about things that you enjoy can lead to big things, but what I liked best was that it reminded me to count all the blessings of blogging - including the indirect benefits.

Yehuda writes:

“The indirect results:

I landed a professional blogging position at a company. I went in for a programming position and offered instead to be their company blogger. And they accepted.

I have had a game published by a publisher who is one my readers.

I’ve received dozens of free games to review.

My writing is getting better all the time.

I know hundreds of great people around the world.

I’ve had articles published in professional journals around the world. I’ve even been interviewed a few times on various subjects.

I know a lot about my field and interest.

I’m enjoying myself.”

And reading through his list, I can most definitely say the same about my blogging journey - there have been a lot of indirect perks:

* I landed some great freelance blogging positions

* I’ve received a ton of stuff to review: games, books, software, ebooks and gadgets.

* I’ve met lots of wonderful people online and in person

* I met one of my best friends and co-blogger through my first blog

* I’ve gone from needing someone to help me install Wordpress to being able to easily install and upgrade Wordpress on my own, as well as tweak the php in themes.

* I get the chance to experiment with different ideas and get creative - and if something doesn’t stick, I’ve learned that it’s all okay

* I get to blog about things I’m really passionate about, and have learned that I can do it with flexibility and without worrying about whether I’m building up a readership

* I have a ton of fun every day.

That’s not to say the monetary benefits of blogging aren’t fun, too. It’s great that an increasing part of my income comes from blogging, and I see the numbers go up every day, even if it’s only slightly. That’s a pretty empowering thing for me.

And because I do make money with my niche blogs, I was able let go of the idea that I needed to build up a huge readership for the blogs that I’m passionate about, and now that I’ve been able to let that go, the fun has come back with those blogs, too.

Thanks, Yehuda, for a great reminder that there’s more to blogging than just making money.

The one thing I really like about blogging is the ease with which you can play with new ideas, explore different territory and just try things on for size.

For the past few months I’ve been trying out a long-term focus, without my usual goal of monetizing what I do.

And I’ve now come to a few conclusions.

The main one is that I have a lot of fun when it comes to focusing on making money - I get so many ideas, and I’ve been missing having those ideas lately.

And the other main conclusion is that with my new blogs - the ones with the long-term focus - I haven’t been enjoying the pressure to write regularly and consistently, even though these are areas that interest me. I love writing posts for these blogs, but I find that I enjoy it most when I’m feeling inspired.

When I push myself to sit down and blog consistently at these blogs, I’m just not having fun with any of it.

It’s far more fun to network with other bloggers when it’s not something that’s on my to-do list for the day.

In other words, I’m finding that blogging about my passions has all of a sudden taken on the feel of “a job”. Which was not my goal.

I have no problems blogging at my niche blogs, though, the ones that do make me money. In fact, I rather enjoy my daily blogging. It’s fun finding things to blog about, it’s fun checking my feeds, it’s fun watching my stats and checking the various monetizing avenues I’m employing.

My freelance blogging is also quite enjoyable, too. When I find material for each post, I get this nice little feeling of achievement.

And lately I’ve been having a run of success with some of my older blogs, ones that I hadn’t actually been blogging at very consistently. Sales are up, impressions are up. (Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Yet.)

New ideas to expand on things are now brewing. Bringing me back full circle to thinking about making money.

So I’ve decided that I’m just going to go with what feels best for me.

I enjoy my new blogs, and readers seem to be interested in what I write - I’ve been getting quite a lot of feedback, especially through email. I’m finding that I want to keep enjoying my new blogs. Not feel forced, not feel constricted.

So I’m going to commit the blogging heresy of writing when an idea comes to me, and not forcing it otherwise. At these blogs, I don’t see the point of posting “stuff” just for the sake of posting regularly. I have the feeling it’s not really what my readers are looking for.

And I’m finding that my focus has shifted back to the money. It’s just too tempting, all these new sales and the increases in traffic that some of my niche blogs have been attracting.

Not to mention, it’s prime time now to gear up for the Christmas season.

So this week, I’ll be spending time adding links to monetize old posts. It’ll be quite a chore, but I’ve been finding that there IS gold in my archives.

And I’ll be writing at my new blogs when inspired. I have this funny feeling that I’m going to be more inspired than not, now that I’ve made this decision.

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind yet again anytime in the near or distant future.