Time Management For Blogging

I've found time and time again that I need to keep myself organised in order to get the best possible results from blogging. So many times I find myself just saying ' OK, let's do this now' or ' It's about time I did this,' - just drifting without any clear plan, and not trying to make the best use of my time.

No matter how much time we spend blogging - whether it's full time or just whenever we get the time - we need to manage our time properly in order to make the most efficient use of it.

I've taken the 'tasks' that need to be done and divided them into categories and then decided on the amount of time that I need to devote to each. This is something that can't be generalised as it really depends on the amount of time we spend blogging and what weight we want to give to each.

Briefing - This should probably be done at the start of the day.

• Checking incoming communications (e-mails, comments etc) and responding to them - some that require more time can be set aside for later on (Socialising & Engaging).
• Checking on income streams - ads, affiliate programmes etc.
• Checking on other updates such as number of fans on Facebook, poll results etc - this will be different of each of us.

Clicking

Ok, not such a sophisticated term, but this refers to the time I spend clicking ads on Adgitize, which helps generate points to make enough to continue advertising on Adgitize. I combine this with clicking on the Entrecard ads which are on most of the Adgitize ads.

Socialising & Engaging

• Responding to comments and messages from the earlier Briefing.
• Making comments where appropriate - this can be combined with Clicking (see above).
• Visiting and participating in appropriate forums.
• Engaging and developing a greater presence in chosen social networks such as Facebook.
• Twitter - regularly tweeting and engaging with others. Steadily building up a quality following.
  

Posting

Yes, let's not forget this! We need to organise ourselves in a way that suits us. Maybe we plan a series of posts in advance. Maybe we take each day as it comes. But, for sure we need to make sure that this is not neglected amongst all the other stuff.

For those that do paid posts / reviews, time needs to be spent on identifying opportunities, applying for them and then writing them.

Research & Development

• Keeping up-to-date with latest developments and ideas. By subscribing to sources such Mashable, ProBlogger and TwiTip, a lot of these will come into your inbox every day and you need to set aside time to take a look at these.
• Simply looking at what other sites are doing and getting ideas. This can also be combined with Socialising & Engaging (see above).
• Regularly looking at your blog(s) and seeing what you are happy with and how you can improve it - such design and layout.
  
• Reviewing income streams - what is working, what isn't working and why not. Any new potential income streams.
  
• Having 'team meetings' with yourself! Perhaps on a weekly basis, sit down and brainstorm - writing down what is going well, what isn't and how you can improve. Planning and then putting those plans into action.

I personally find that this simple analysis of what I need to be doing and then allocating appropriate time slots for each of them has helped to focus me and make better use of my time. Any comments?

Using Facebook Pages To Increase Traffic

I've just created a Facebook page for one of my blogs in order to see if I can increase traffic. The page is called Authentic Greek Recipes (see below) and links to my blog of the same name. I'm going to regularly update it with posts from the blog with a photo, brief description and link to the original post.

It's been up for a couple of days now and there are just over 100 fans at the time of writing. The good part is that about 20 of them are people who are not my Friends on Facebook, but have become fans following someone else's suggestion. Obviously, when you set up a Page, the first people to invite are your friends but for it to be successful you need to get them referring other people and thus increase traffic through the links. Already I've seen a sharp increase in traffic from Facebook.

Before you go ahead and set up a page, though, I think you need to know if it's genuinely going to interest people. This is why I did it with Greek recipes - people are into food! I wouldn't do it with this blog, for example, as I don't feel it would be offering something different from any number of other Pages.

There are a large number of niche blogs out there that I think would benefit from having their own Page on Facebook and a resultant increase in traffic. But as I said above, the thing is for it to be attractive enough for people who are not your Friends to become fans.

Authentic Greek Recipes on Facebook

Enhance Your Blof Posts With Apture

I've just started using Apture. It's a way of adding extra material for your readers without their having to leave the page, making your post richer and more interesting. You'll probably have seen this device on a lot of the online newspapers, where a word or phrase will have a small window that opens with more information, photos or video.

I did use Snap for a short while, but this is different. Snap just gave you a snapshot of a particular link and to be honest I found it annoying and it slowed down the page. Apture is not contextual advertising either, you choose which word or phrase you want to expand on and then you choose exactly what you want to show. You can choose a video, photo, text, link to a specific URL or post within your site and even embed a code. In fact, there are supposedly 50+ sources of multimedia.

To give you an example of a text link, this is some text about blogging from Wikipedia. Add an R to Apture and this is the song you get by Blondie.

What Apture does is make your posts much more interesting for visitors and keeps them on your site for longer. I, personally, wouldn't overload it, but that's a choice for each of us to make.

If you're an Amazon affiliate, you can also make some money in this way. This is an example of a link to a book - Problogger - which, by the way, I have constantly found to be a great source of information.

To start using Apture, you need to download - free - the add-on for your particular blogging platform. You can do that here. Once you've downloaded it, you go to your blog and a small dashboard will open up asking you to sign on. Then you just add the sites you want to use it on - for each site you will be given a code to install on the blog. One thing I would like to mention, you will be given the option to Auto-enhance when you add your blog, I would recommend unclicking this option, in order to have complete control over what links you want.

Take a look at this video tutorial produced by Apture. There are many ways of using Apture that I haven't mentioned, and this will give you a better idea.

Kindle Blogs

Earlier this year, Amazon offered bloggers the chance to have their blogs published for
Kindle. I recently tried it out to see how it would go.

The way it works is that people who have the Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6" Display, U.S. Wireless, Latest Generation) can not only read books from Amazon, but also take out a monthly subscription to blogs of their choice to be read on Kindle. There is a 14-day free trial.

You, as publisher get 30% of the subscription, which Amazon determines - either $o.99 or $1.99 per month. If you live in the USA you can receive payment by electronic bank transfer or check, whereas if you live outside the US you only have the check option, with a $50 threshold and $8 fee per check. Unfortunately, they only have the dollar option at the moment - hopefully this will change so that they become like AdSense.

Anyway, despite these disadvantages I decided to give it a go - another potential income stream, after all, without having to do anything extra. I had a think, first of all, about which of my blogs people with Kindle would be more likely to want access to and I decided on my recipe blog and the Daily Joke blog. To be honest, I had more hopes for the latter and this has proved to be correct. I've had a few subscriptions for the Daily Joke blog in the first month, but none yet for the recipe blog.

To get an idea of what the Amazon page for the blogs looks like, you can check out my Daily Joke blog for Kindle here -

And the Authentic Greek Recipes blog here -



To check it out, just go to Kindle Publishing

Using Chitika To Complement AdSense

I've just started using Chitika Premium on one of my other blogs Authentic Greek Recipes. The initial indications are good and I find it a great complement to AdSense.

Chitika doesn't contravene the AdSense T&C as it works in a different way. It pays per click, but appears only to those who have come to your site via search engines and shows ads that are related to your search terms. This means that you have to have a decent percentage of your visitors coming through search engines, otherwise it's pretty pointless having it. Also, at the moment it is only for visitors from the USA and Canada. So anybody visiting you from outside of that area doesn't even see the ad box.

So if you have what you would consider a decent number of people visiting your site through search engines and from North America, then I would say it's definitely worth your while signing up at Chitika. They approve (or disapprove) your site pretty quickly and if you have other blogs, you don't need to reapply for each of them - they are automatically included in the initial approval.

Once you have done that, then make sure that you get the optimum size and placement of ad box. I have placed it above the blog posts so that it can be seen immediately on 'arrival'.

Earn Indirect Income From Your Blog

You can earn direct income from your blog - through ads and becoming an affiliate - but it's also possible to make money indirectly. You can sell a product or service through your blog to your readers.

Now, there are many of these that you can choose from, but I'm going to talk about one in particular in this post - lessons. I decided to try it out with one of my other blogs, Authentic Greek Recipes, and all the indications so far are that it is going to be successful. We are going to organise Greek Cookery Lessons here next summer - see the post.

To get an idea if there was any interest in this, I simply put up a poll on the site to get an indication if it was worth proceeding. So far, out of the 165 responses, 51 (31%) have said Yes and 33 (20%) have said that they would seriously consider it. Now, these are not huge numbers but as we plan just to do small, friendly groups it's more than enough for us to go ahead and organise the lessons.

This is the kind of thing several kinds of blogs could consider doing. Apart from cookery blogs, crafts people and photographers immediately spring to mind. How about arranging a holiday for people to come to you for lessons? It's a good way of using the readership that you have built up, who consider you to be an authority on the subject.

To get an indication of the potential interest, you can set up a poll on your blog - I got mine free from PollDaddy. I wrote a post about it and then left the poll up in the top left corner of the site.

Let me know what you think and if it's something that you could do.

Learning From The Pros 2

This is basically a follow-up to my post about the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. The month-long course run by ProBlogger finished a few days ago and I feel I definitely benefited from it. Some of the points presented I was already aware of, but they helped me focus on learning from them in a clearer and more defined manner.

I have selected 5 particular points that helped me. Obviously I'm not going to just copy here what was said about them, but just mention how I relate to them.

Spend some time on a successful blog in your niche.

When I first started this blog I wrote a post about Learning From Other Blogs, but on this course it defined more clearly how we could learn from the Content, Design, Reader Engagement, Monetisation, Traffic and SEO of a successful blog in whatever our niche is.

Learn From Successful Bloggers.

For this particular lesson we were directed to specific posts from 10 very successful bloggers. Another great way of learning.

Looking at your blog’s statistics/metrics package to see what you can learn from it.

Presumably we all look at our statistics, but this lesson showed us analytically what to look at, why, and what to do with the information. This is something I'm not so familiar with and it was a great help.

Interlinking previously written posts in your archives.

This again was something I wasn't really familiar with. Going to some of your older posts and interlinking between them, thus helping SEO and page views as well as increasing usefulness to your readers. I have been trying more consciously now to create links between posts.

Create a 'sneeze page' for your blog.

I think this is a great idea. Creating a post which includes several links to other posts you have made. One way I found to put this into practice was a post on my Authentic Greek Recipes blog where I created a post - Greek Vegetarian Meal - which put together several recipes previously posted into a recommended full meal. There were links to each of the dishes included in the meal.


All in all, I found it a useful learning opportunity and I need to take as many of these opportunities as possible until I become successful. And even then, I'm sure that the learning never stops.

Creating Your Own Social Network

In previous posts I talked about finding social networks relevant to your niche to help promote yourself and generate traffic. You can see them here and here.

You can also create your own social network for the same reasons plus you will also increase your own profile. With Ning, it couldn't be easier. First, though, I would recommend that you research what networks already exist similar to what you have in mind.

Is there already saturation? This would mean that it will be very difficult for people to be attracted to your network.

Or do you feel that there is room for your network? Go ahead - it doesn't cost anything. Once it starts to take off, as I said, it will help elevate your profile on the web and bring more traffic to your blog(s) as well as giving you the opportunity to network with similar people or people with similar blog(s).

I myself have just started a network for bloggers over 50. I've called it O Fab!! - Over Fifty And Blogging. Fab is very much a word of the sixties, so the initials suit. It's just going to be a relaxed place and I'm just going to see what interest there is and how it goes. I feel that bloggers over 50 - whether they are doing it for money or just as a hobby - have a certain 'maturity' to offer to the world of blogging!

So, if you are over 50 and blogging, do come and join here. I'm neither technical nor artistic, so I'm not particularly happy with the logo at the moment, but when, hopefully, the membership increases I'm going to see if someone would like to design something better (and get full credit for it on the main page, of course).

Visit O FAB!!

Likaholix

I recently signed up at Likaholix - a new social network where you can share your likes with other members. This can be anything you have found on the internet - sites, products, books etc. If you have at least 10 likes in a particular category, you become what is called a Tastemaker, which gives more weight to your recommendations.

I've only just recently joined, but it seems like an interesting idea, and was set up by two ex-Google employees. At the moment, joining is by invitation only, so if you're interested I have some invitations (30, I think) if you click here.

Learning From The Pros

If you want to succeed as a blogger, I think it's extremely important that you try and learn from the experts. The ones who really are successful. So, I enlisted in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog course, which is run by Darren Rowse at ProBlogger.

Today is the 5th day and we've been mailed a new task, along with tips, every day. I've found that it has helped me focus on what is important and giving me greater clarity. I'm a great admirer of ProBlogger and purchased his book (co-authored with Chris Garret). To see my review of the book, go to my previous post here.

The 31 Days course is completely free and he is still accepting people onto it, even though it has already started. I would recommend it and the link to sign up is here.

I'm Using TweetDeck Now

Continuing my foray into the world of Twitter, I've now signed up at TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is a great tool that you can download for free here. It is an application that allows you to monitor information from various social media in a single concise view and currently integrates services from Twitter, Twitscoop, 12seconds, Stocktwits and now Facebook. I'm just using it for Twitter at the moment just until I get into the swing of it.

TweetDeck enables you to split your main Twitter feed (All Friends) into columns allowing a broader overview of tweets. It automatically updates and so provides you with an effective and user-friendly dashboard of realtime information.

I've just installed it, so I'm still getting the hang of it but it certainly seems to clear view of friends, tweets and updates.

Has anyone else been using it? What's your experience of it?

My Earnings At Adgitize Have Quadrupled....Without Doing Anything!

I've posted here before about Adgitize, but I wanted to mention the latest good news. They have changed the payout system so that you can earn more money. This started from April 1st and I wanted to wait and see what difference it would make to my earnings before writing about it. Well, in the first couple of days my daily earnings have quadrupled!

We're not talking huge amounts of money here, but we are talking a steady little earner without really having to do anything for it. Plus traffic from views of your ad(s).

To get the most out of Adgitize, you really need to be an advertiser - it only costs $14 a month to get displayed across the whole network, and you can get more than twice that amount back through your earnings. Plus the increased traffic - I've been getting around 50 visits a day from Adgitize to my Authentic Greek Recipes ad.

So what do you have to do to make money?

Everyone can make up to 500 points a day over 5 categories which have a maximum of 100 points each -

Article Points - you get points if you post on your blog(s).
You do this anyway, so there's no extra work involved here.

Click Points - you get points for clicking on the Adgitize ads.
I combine this with Entrecard dropping, which I do anyway. Not everyone has an EC widget, but I would say that out of the 50 Adgitize sites I visit every day, only about 5 don't have one. Why do I only visit 50 sites? Because, as an advertiser my points are doubled and I get my maximum 100 from visiting just 50 sites.

Ad Views Points - If you display Adgitize ads on your site, you get points for the number of views of those ads every day.

Page Views Points - As above, but these are points for views of pages that have the ads displayed.

Advertisers Points - This is points for being an advertiser.

So where's the extra work? The only thing 'extra' you have to do is visit some blogs, which you're doing anyway if you're in EC, and even if you aren't, how long does it take to visit 50 blogs and click on them? Especially if you're getting paid for it! But even if you don't want to visit blogs and click on the ads, you're still earning points - and money - from the other categories, it's just that you're losing a potential 20% of your earnings.

As I said above, now that the money being paid out has increased, this really is a nice little earner. You can earn as a publisher, without paying anything, but by becoming an advertiser as well, you not only can get your $14 a month back, but also make more on top of it.