Respect Thy Neighbour - And Why We Shouldn’t Judge A Book By Its Cover

While sitting at my keyboard and typing away I’m watching a movie. Yes, that officially confirms that I can multi task. Isn’t that a woman’s birthright anyway?

The movie is about a girl who does an experiment in school about fat people and how they are being treated by most people. I think you can guess that many fail the test because they shun, ridicule, ignore and outright bully fat people and it made me ask myself “what right do any of us have to judge others for how they look, are dressed, talk, behave and what not.”

The sad thing is we all do it. I do it and while I stop myself every now and again and remind myself that I’m no better than the fat lady shopping with her three fat kids in tow. I look at them and feel repulsion for letting themselves go so far.

To be honest, I do feel rotten when I catch myself with these thoughts and it wasn’t until I read a book that talks about the conditional cause of obesity that made me realize that it might not be their fault at all.

If you are interested, the book is called The Gabriel Method and will most likely be the most eye opening book for anybody who ever has or still suffers with extra weight. (And it isn’t a diet!).

It was for me. See, throughout my life I have struggled on and off with extra weight. I have pedaled between $62 kg’s all the way up to $90 kg. After reading this book I now know that the cause of my weight gain is emotional based and I need to resolve this before I can lose weight once and for all.

But I don’t want to talk about my weight issues. I want to address the problem of judging others because of their appearance. While I am heavier than is good for my height, I don’t particularly look fat.

I wanted to know why we judge others constantly and why we do this, even though we know it is wrong. After much consideration and thought provoking discussions with my husband I came to the conclusion that in many cases it is a result of our upbringing and the influence we were exposed to while growing up.

Knowing this doesn’t make the act of thinking these thoughts any better, but it does help the healing process and getting better at not judging others because they look different to us.

I suppose the stereotype advertising we are exposed to every day doesn’t help this cause either. Our role models these days are stick insects (not mine BTW) with collar bones that nearly touch the nose. (Ok that is also judging but I like to drive home a point here about false advertising).

Upon realizing this myself I have started to consciously see the good in every person I meet. I really does help. While it isn’t much, I believe if we all did that, the world would be a much better place.

In case you wondered why I’m rambling about judging others by a cover I’d like to make the connection to working from home. We do the same while surfing websites and blogs and our minds are constantly in a state of judgment. We judge other blogs on their colors, their RSS subscriber feed, their comment section and in the way we can or can not navigate their website.

Funny thing is that while we do this we miss out on some really good reading because we are blinded by appearances. Instead of giving someone the benefit of the doubt we click away, never to return. I have come to learn that some of my favorite bloggers own very basic blogs. There is no fluff about them. They are simple and on the first look boring, but when I looked beyond the “facade” I found real treasure.

Does this happen to you too? Have you caught yourself judging other websites or blogs, only to be positively surprised once you looked more closely or is appearance everything to you, even if it contains a shallow shell? What do you think?

May 1st Is RSS Awareness Day - So What Is RSS?

My friend Daniel from Daily Blog Tips has declared May 1st to be RSS Awareness day!

I am pretty busy with a new baby on the way, but I did want to let you know that May 1st is RSS (Really Simple Syndication) awareness day and in honor of the day I wanted to provide you some good resources to learn more about RSS:

RSS Awareness Day (Official Site)

What is RSS?

What are RSS feeds?

What is an RSS aggregator?“.

How to use RSS

My Meeting With Wendy Piersall Of SparkPlugging

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of meeting Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging (formerly eMoms at Home). It was a real pleasure to meet with her in person after being online friends for about a year now.

Wendy is very altruistic and would love to help everyone work from home. She recently made major changes to her blog and even changed the domain name from emomsathome.com to sparkplugging.com. She has done amazing things with her blog and I highly recommend you go check it out.

I may talk more about some of the things we discussed at a later point in time, but the main thing I took away from meeting Wendy is that she sincerely wants to help people learn how to work from home for a living.

Before I go, here is a picture of the two of us from earlier this week:

Focus On Quality - Not Quantity

There has been an alarming trend of bloggers lately, who complain about all the rehashed crap that is being blogged about worldwide. I have to agree with this and a sure proof of this is my shrinking RSS feed reader. Bloggers who posted like 5 blog entries about how their ebook performed after being released have been eradicated as well as those who simply blog to sell me their rubbish.

These days I hardly read MMO (make money online) blogs and it looks like I’m not missing out on much anyway. What is it with bloggers who think they should blog everyday but don’t manage to put out one meaningful post during the week – yet they are treated like the gods and goddesses of the blogosphere.

Have we really become suckers who simply hang out at a blog because the RSS feed reads in the thousands, even though the blogger doesn’t have anything of value to share?

Where has the focus on quality gone?

What do I mean with quality anyway? I guess I’m talking about meaningful posts that either educate, help, provoke or make people really think.

When I first started blogging I also blogged daily for many months. But I soon realized that I was going down the same road many of today’s bloggers travel on and that is the road of “overdoing it with unmeaningfull content” that only serves one purpose…to bring them more traffic.

It was actually Maki of Dosh Dosh who got me thinking when he announced that he would cut back his posting frequency in the middle of last year.

I thought, I rather do this myself than write rehashed stuff just because…

Since then I have cut back severely and in my eyes this has been the best thing I could have done. My traffic hasn’t suffered at all. Actually quite the contrary and unless I have something of quality (see above) to share with my readers, I won’t post.

To be fair, one man’s/woman’s quality could be another’s trash. I know that but I also think you would agree with me when I say there is far too much rehashed stuff floating around online. Just to blog because you ought to is simply like sticking a knife in your throat as your readers will notice eventually if there is a lack of quality.

Instead of trying to sell every affiliate program under the sun and blog about it when the next “wonder” hits the Internet, why not blog about a topic which is your forte and allows you to help educate others instead?

What would be your favourite:

Blogger A: who blogs about this and that affiliate program, posts every day, talks all the time about how they don’t really know anything about the make money industry and yet tries to flog an ebook (free or paid) to their readers in order to make money on the back end. Plus they pretend they are the next A-lister because they have enough readers to fill a small stadium (OR NOT).

Blogger B: who doesn’t claim to be something special, but makes money in a particular niche and uses his/her knowledge to help their reader with lots of informative and free info. This blogger hasn’t got a huge following because he/she doesn’t rub shoulders with the A-team, sucking up to whatever they say.

Mmmhh… it is a hard choice, isn’t it? Would you forfeit a minute in the limelight for a minute of true learning that can actually help you make money? I guess it comes down to two things:

1. how gullible you really are
2. how serious to succeed you really are

Anyway, do you focus on quantity, quality or both?

Apparently This Is How You Really Make Money Online - Or Is It?

I’ve done many things over the years to make money online and have heard of countless other methods that I simply never tried for one reason or another. But I must not have gotten the memo on the newest trend in making money online.

If you follow the make money online blogosphere at all then you have probably noticed the same trend I have seen spring up lately. I’m not sure what to call it but it goes a little something like this… start a blog, build up it’s popularity, get a lot of readers, and cash out big time by selling it.

I guess this must really be the way to make money online. I mean if all these well-known bloggers are doing it then it has to be a great thing to do, right? Well, I suppose it can be a great way to make a nice chunk of money all at once.

But, then what? Your blog is now gone. Your monthly income is now gone. All the hard work you put into it for months or even years… gone!

It’s definitely not an easy or quick task to build up a popular blog so this isn’t one of those “rinse and repeat” business models that you can do over and over again to keep making money. Out of the thousands of bloggers out there only a small percent ever build up a highly popular blog.

Not to mention this is horrible for the person that gets suckered into buying the blog. Most of these blogs are selling for a lot more than they are actually worth. Yeah it looks good on paper because they do have a lot of traffic and a big following. But they aren’t following you, the new owner; they are following the original owner.

These blogs that are being sold have been branded by the original owner and the readers are following them because of their writing style or personality or some other trait they possess. As soon as the blog is sold all that goes away and so do the readers.

The new owner isn’t left with much more than if they would have just started a new blog and built it up themselves. Now they are out $25,000 or so without a whole lot to show for it.

So, let’s take a look at where the seller and buyer are sitting at this point…

The seller has a full bank account but nothing to bring in more income and the money they just got from the blog sale won’t last long. The buyer has an empty bank account and a blog that might be bringing in a little income but not nearly as much as they thought it would.

Neither side wins!

Therefore, I don’t think this is a very good way to go about making money online for either the seller or the buyer.

Of course there are a few exceptions to this. One being if the seller can no longer keep the blog for some reason and must sell it. Another being if the buyer is getting a popular blog for a super low price. And search engine rankings also play a big factor. But these exceptions are a whole other article themselves so I won’t go into them here. I will save that for my next post.

Blogger Appreciation Day - Some Link Love For You

I just found out about something Darren Rowse started today that he is calling “Blogger Appreciation Day“. I found out because I was at the top of Chris Garrett’s list (from leaving the most comments on his blog since it began).

My list is not quite 100 people, because I had to remove a few that no longer exist and there were some duplicates with slightly different URLs. Here is my list of top commentators over the years:

Amanda
Garry Conn
Leroy Brown
Trent Brownrigg
Andrea Yager
Matt Tutt
Rob Stgeorge
Matthew
Wendy Piersall
cooliojones
Monika @ The Writers Manifesto
MamaDuck
Daniel
Maki
Matt Jones
Sourav Sharma
Collin
Daniel
James Mann
digitalnomad
Jonathan
Chris Johnson
Easton Ellsworth
John Wesley
Michael M
Community Building Blog
robert
Ruben
Affiliate Marketing eBook Reviews
DayJobNuker
Edward
Chetan
Daniel Gattermann
Joseph
Ashwin Foogooa
John Morson
Bian
Craig
Gratefully Rich
Ray Dotson
Jersey Girl
Justin Dupre
Glen Allsopp
Adam Thompson
Simonne
Martin
Markk
Madhur Kapoor
Make Cash Online
lady influence
glblguy
max
Court
SELaplana
Gayla McCord
Marco Richter
Wade
Michael from Pro Blog Design
Robert Hruzek
Gregg Thurby
Sarah D
Tammara

Thank you so much for contributing and reading this blog over the years. I really appreciate you.

For those interested in creating a similar list, I used Chris Garrett’s method of creating this list:

If you want to see who your top 100 commenters are, run the following SQL on your database:

SELECT CONCAT('<a href=',`comment_author_url`,'>',`comment_author`,'</a>') as commenter
FROM `wp_comments`
GROUP BY `comment_author_email`
ORDER BY COUNT(`comment_author_email`) DESC
LIMIT 101

I do appreciate everyone who has commented on this blog, and I also appreciate those of you who haven’t. As Darren suggests, I will be sending out emails later today and probably tomorrow to let even more of you know that I appreciate you.

May God Bless You All!

How Not To Ask For A Link Exchange

Last week I got what I considered to be a hilarious request for a blogroll link exchange. In case you want to know how NOT to ask me for a link exchange, here is the email I was sent the other day (name of said person and sites have been removed):

Hi {find name of blogger and put here},

I am writing on behalf of the blog team at xxxxxxx, which runs the popular xxxxxxx Marketing blog.

We are hand picking a few really great blogs to add to our blog roll. If you’re interested in having your blog recommended on xxxxxx blog, please consider adding our blog to yours.

The name of our blog is xxxxxxxx.

Thanks!

I often get requests for links that I think are form letters. However, in this case it was an obvious form letter. I was laughing out loud when I read the line:

“We are hand picking a few really great blogs”

Really??? Hand picking???

If you ever handpick a blog to exchange links with, don’t start your email with:

Hi {find name of blogger and put here},

It kind of gives the impression that you weren’t exactly handpicking my blog.

P.S. My name is George.

5 Advantages Of Becoming A Guest Blogger

Guest Post by Matthew Tutt

You have just created one of the best blogs that the Internet has ever seen. But now what?

How do you expect to get anyone to notice this site?

It may well be the best site ever created, or it may contain the meaning of life somewhere on the page, but can you expect anyone to notice it in the first place?

This is one of the trickiest obstacles to overcome when you first set up your own website or blog. You can’t expect instant search engine traffic or get good SERPS for your site because it is still brand new. Unless your domain name is one which is randomly typed by Internet users, you can’t really expect to get any kind of traffic at all.

One of the best and easiest ways of getting your site (and yourself) noticed on the Internet is by becoming a guest blogger. This is simply when you have some kind of a deal in place with another already well-established blog and you agree to write interesting, related articles in return for a link back to your own blog or website. The blog owner is getting free (hopefully) unique content and you are receiving free publicity for your own blog. Everyone is happy.

Here Are Some Of The Many Advantages Of Becoming A Guest Blogger:

1. You Can Get Your Website/Blog Noticed For Free Nearly Instantly
   It costs you nothing to write an article, but will obviously involve a little bit of your time. This should be time well spent though, and guest blogging probably gives more advantages to your site/blog then by paying for some kind of advertisements. Also once you have written the article and have submitted it to the blog it is ready to go live on the site (might take a few hours for the blog owner to check it through and then submit it). This means that you can get almost instant traffic to your own site/blog.
2. You Can Tap Into Related Markets
   Say you had a blog which contained dog training advice. You wouldn’t then find a blog about financial advice and ask to become a guest blogger. Why would the readers of the financial advice blog want to read your articles about teaching your dog how to stop biting people? You should find a blog which is in the same niche as your own blog/site, and then ask to become a guest blogger. Then the articles that you create will be of interest to the blog readers, who in turn will be much more likely to visit your website as it is related to the same subject, which is obviously of interest to the reader.
3. Show Off Your Skills And Mark Your Authority On A Subject
   Perhaps you feel you are highly talented at writing on your blog, or perhaps you are highly knowledgeable of a specific topic. This is all very well, but if no-one goes to your site then no-one will ever notice you. This is why guest blogging is an excellent way of showing off your skills or your authority on a subject. As a guest blogger you are instantly in touch with the readers of a blog, so you now have a direct chance of impressing the readers of that blog – who should appreciate your work, and may in turn feel inclined to visit your own blog/site.
4. Free Backlinks For SEO Purposes
   If you are guest blogging on a site which as a good PageRank and which has good SERPS, you will be gaining some powerful backlinks to your own site. As a guest blogger you should be allowed to place a few links back to your site/blog from within the blog-post you have written, and the search engines will see these links and this will hopefully improve your search engine position. A higher position in the search engines will obviously result in more visitors to your pages.
5. Improve Your Writing Skills
   Although many people may not really care about their own writing skills, it is still an important aspect of guest blogging. As a guest blogger you will get (hopefully) a few chances of impressing the visitors of that blog, so you have to make your blog posts interesting and exciting. If your writing is poorly constructed or boring to read then chances are no-one is going to bother taking a look at your blog/site. You should adapt and improve your writing when it comes to guest blogging as you will only have a limited space in which to show off your skills, and if you don’t impress then you won’t gain much from becoming a guest blogger.

What Do You Think Of My New Wordpress Theme?

It’s finally here!

I finally finished the new theme for this blog last week and decided to put it up tonight.

A few months ago, I was looking around for inspiration for a new theme and came across Brian Gardner’s Revolution Magazine theme (you have probably seen it in various forms on other blogs). I really liked it, so I bought the license that allows me to use it on multiple blogs. I changed the layout and design to suit my needs. Chere, who has done web design for me on various projects, created the logo for me. She is fantastic to work with.

So, what do you think of the new theme?

Here’s a screen shot of the old theme for comparison:

Click on it to see a bigger version.

Do you like the new theme better or the old one?

The 10 Best Ways To Increase Blog Traffic

I wrote a list of 101 ways to get traffic to your blog a while back. I decided to narrow that list down to the ten best ways I have found to get traffic to my blogs.

The 10 Best Ways To Increase Blog Traffic:

1. SEO
   Without a doubt SEO has been my favorite way to get traffic to my blogs. The Google algorithm loves blogs, which makes SEO a very good way to get traffic to your blog.


2. Commenting
   Leaving comments on blogs in related niches is a great way to get new targeted traffic to your blog. It is also an excellent way to build relationships with other bloggers which leads me to number 3…


3. Networking
   Networking is possibly the single most important skill for making big money online. It is also a great way to build traffic to your blog.


4. Word Of Mouth
   Simply tell your friends and family about your blog and/or specific posts on your blog. You will be surprised by how much traffic that can generate.


5. Linkbait
   Create posts that are designed to grab people’s attention. Controversial posts are often associated with linkbait, but there are plenty of other ways to create linkbait. 101 lists make for good linkbait and so do posts that are out of the ordinary in some way.


6. Link Out
   Link liberally to other blogs in your posts. Many bloggers keep track of incoming links to their blog and will come check out your blog when you link to them. This can also help you get comments.


7. Stumbleupon
   I am a big fan of using stumbleupon for getting traffic to your blog. If you haven’t signed up for it you should. Stumbleupon is this blogs third best traffic source, behind retuning visitors, and Google.


8. List Posts
   I have found that posts with lists (like this one) generate more traffic to your blog. They tend to get bookmarked and voted on more on social sites. The more list posts you write the more traffic you will get.


9. Blog Memes
   Create a blog meme and tag other bloggers. Participating in blog memes has definitely increased my blog traffic. One blog meme in particular really helped this blog out and I never even participated in it.


10. Quality Content
    Quality content is the key to keep people coming back for more. If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will come back regularly to read your posts. Having regular readers is a great way to increase blog traffic.

Those are the ten best ways I have found to get traffic to my blogs. What are your favorite ways to get traffic to your blog?

Announcing New Co-Author Trent Brownrigg

Trent Brownrigg is now officially a co-author of this blog.

With Trent, Monika, Ryan, and myself, we now have a total of 4 authors to bring you some fresh perspectives on making money online. I am really looking forward to working more closely with Trent in the coming months.

Please welcome Trent as a co-author and check out his blog. I am sure you will enjoy his writing.

Coming Soon - New Direction For This Blog

While working on a new theme for this blog, I realized that I want to take this blog in a slightly different direction. What I discovered is that I really want the primary goal of this blog to be:

“To help beginners make money online while maintaining their integrity.”

Because of this new direction, I will be slowly changing the way this blog is organized in order to line up with the new mission statement. This goal will also be reflected in the new design that should be finished up in the next few weeks.

I hope you enjoy the changes that are coming…

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