3 ways to defeat writers block

3 ways to defeat writers block

From time to time we all have to deal with writers block. Overcoming it isn’t always easy, but there are ways to do so. I’ve presented three of the most tried and true methods. Keep in mind each person is different. Some people can try any one and that will work. Others will need to find the specific one that helps them. While still other will need a combination of all three methods.

Exercise

Exercise has several benefits including:

• Improves your mood by stimulating chemicals in your body. Rueters just ran a story about exercise being “on par” with drugs for releaving depression.
• Combats chronic disease such as osteoperosis, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressue, and high cholestrol
• Weight management. This doesn’t need more explanation I hope
• Strengthens your heart and lungs. Again this doesn’t need more explanation why this is good for you
• Better sleep. Burns up the extra energy

Beyond those benefits exercise helps you defeat writers block because it gets your mind off of the subject for 20-30 minutes and often that is exactly what is needed to tackle it from a fresh perspective.

Read

Reading can help in a few ways.:

• Give you new ideas to write about. When you feel like you’re saying the same thing again and again try reading and finding new ideas
• Give you a break from writing. Just like exercising can give you a break reading can do the same thing and often times that’s what is needed to overcome writers block
• Introduce more vocabulary. Sometimes writing that next article is as simple as having some new words by which to express it

Write

Writing will help stimulate the brain and often times stokes up new ideas you had never thought of before.

• Spend 10-15 minutes just writing. Write about the floor, or the hole in the wall. Write about your first dog. Write about the book you read last night, or the birds you saw on your morning walk. Just write. The idea is to get your brain moving, not to turn out master pieces
• Don’t waste time editing or revising. In fact for the most part plan on tossing the writing in the next 3-5 days, but hold it that long to allow yourself time to revisit. Chances are you’ll just toss it then, but there’s always the chance you’ll have produced something usefull for future writing projects
• Do not write for yourself. In other words don’t be overly critical of what you write at this stage

Posted in Writing | 8 Comments »

Halo 3 hoedown

Halo 3 hoedown

Found this hilarious video on youtube called “Halo hoedown” If it doesn’t play try back later as Youtube is getting ready for some work at 10pm PST tonight (9/25/07).

Posted in Video and Flash games | 1 Comment »

Viral links are bad for your blog’s health

Viral links are bad for your blog’s health

There, I’ve said it. Exactly what I’ve been thinking since I got involved with viral linking over a month ago. Earlier today I made the decision to remove myself entirely from the viral linking “chain letter” which is making its way around the blogosphere lately. Meaning I’ve decided not to actively promote it with other sites. If this blog still appears on different blogs viral lists I can’t do much about that. Why would I bow out of this link generation method? There are a few reasons that in and of themselves probably weren’t to much of a big deal, but taken as a whole I felt it best to get out. Ultimately I’m telling you all of this so that you might consider this viral linking from another perspective that you’ve not though about before.

Before I get into a great amount of detail as to why I’ll just run down the reasons real quick for those of you with short attention spans.

• Quality of links
• Maintenance of the list
• Horrible click thru rate
• I want to work on organic traffic

Quality of the links

I know nothing of SEO, but I do know that a great many of the links were coming from sources I didn’t care to be associated with. Not because they were bad, or morally corrupt but because there was no relationship beyond the link itself.

It’s said that in order to grow as a person we need to be around people who stretch us and force us to grow. That’s sort of the same principle I’m applying here. I’m going to work on individual relationships with those blogs and people I believe will not only help me to grow, but also benefit from being associated with me.

I also have a great concern over whether or not search engines might consider it to be a questionable practice. As I said before I’m considering “quitting” Google, but I’d really like for it to be on my own terms not because I did something for a few extra clicks a month.

Maintenance of the list

Simply put I was tired of keeping the list up to date. Removing those who hadn’t reciprocated my links, or adding those who had for the first time. Originally I had moved it to it’s own wordpress page and had been updating it every 3 or 4 days, but ultimately it became to much of a hassle.

Horrible click thru rate

I don’t believe the CTR justifies the work. I’m talking both incoming and outgoing traffic to and from viral links. For example up to today for the month of September I’ve gotten less than 35 clicks coming in to this blog. Outgoing clicks on viral listed sites has been less than 15. Compare that against Darren quoting me on Problogger which has gotten me 94 visits in the past month. As you can see the CTR for viral links is miserable.

In short the fact that I get more traffic from comments I make on other blogs than this blog being linked on a viral list speaks volumes to me. I’m willing to bet that if you did some research you’d probably find the same thing to be true on your blog as well.

I want to work on organic traffic

Above I mentioned that I am going to work on individual relationships. That’s part of what I mean by organic links. I’m throughly convinced that people are 100,000 times more likely to follow a link that is included as part of an actual meaningful post instead of simply lost amid a blob of other links. I simply don’t have the time or desire to sit here each week and create something truly original like dcr’s “Drunken Virals” posting. A viral link like that is surely more valuable than the ones most of us put up.

I’ve come to the realization that simply getting your name mentioned in a valid article is thousands of times more valuable than getting linked in a mass produced list hundreds of times.

There you have it. All of the reasons I am no longer participating in the viral link list. I am a little curious about if others have done the same thing as I have done…

1. What reason did you have for quitting it?
2. Has your trafffic increased or decreased since doing so?
3. Is there any reason you believe I’ve overlooked that should give me pause about separating myself from this project?

Posted in Blogging | 11 Comments »

Quitting Google: Looking for feedback

Quitting Google: Looking for feedback

Face it, you hate Google. They’ve become the Microsoft of the 21st century. Except they’re 1000 times worse. Literally you find yourself unable to live without the mighty Google. They’ve become intergral to everything you do online. Their existance allows you to function and it makes you sick.

It seems there is a growing discontentment among webpreneurs regarding Google. I’m one of them. Not because their services don’t work, but because their policies are absurd and you never really know where you stand with anything because they refuse to give yes or no answers when you ask a question. I sent an email asking if Blog Rush was ok under their Adsense policy. I got a canned response basically saying artificial traffic generation might get my account banned. Thanks Google, as always I appreaciate your straight forward answer…

Before I go any further I should explain that the title of this post Quitting Google isn’t entirely accurate. I’m simply in the consideration stage about what it will entail and actually mean. Once I figure that out I will either quit in full or quit those services I absolutely can live without. Speaking of services here are the ones I use and what they do. Any suggestions on alternate FREE programs with the same functions as these would be great!

Adwords

Adwords is Google’s PPC (pay per click) program which allows us to cheaply advertise our websites. I’ve signed up for an account but I never use this. I know there are a few alternatives such as Yahoo Search Marketing, but I haven’t actually checked them out yet. You might be wondering why I care if I don’t use it in the first place. Because within the next few months I plan on doing so.

Alerts

This service allows you to keep track of the usage of keywords and phrases. It’s a powerful marketing tool that I’ve only used once and that for testing. Since I’m not huge into monetization of my blog I’m not looking for a replacement for this.

Analytics

This is Google’s site stat package. It gives a lot of useful information regarding visitors to your site. This is one that I wouldn’t quit using as I’ve found it to be very comprehensive and useful.

Blogger

Google’s blogging service. I have a couple of blogs there, but nothing I couldn’t move elsewhere. At this point I have need for this service due to other blogs, but I’d love to quit this one as well.

Calendar

An online calendar to share with your friends. Think of Outlook’s calendar, or lightening. This is an easy one to lose as aside from the initial test it’s something I never use.

Docs

Google Docs is basically an online office suite. Everything is stored online and thus available to you whereever you might have an internet connection. I’ve used this extensively at different points over the past several months. This is one of those gray areas. I don’t like that everything is stored on Google’s servers, but it is so damn convient…

Gmail

Google Mail, more affectionately known as “Gmail”. This is one of the few services that Google provides I consider essential. There’s no way I would quit this service.

Groups

Google’s discussion groups. I see reason not to continue using these as they are run by individuals not the Google entity

Reader

Google Reader lets you keep up with RSS feeds. Very useful tool, but then so are the other 50,000 of them out on the market now. I’ve signed up for one, but I only use it once every few weeks. No great loss to get rid of this.

Webmaster Tools

This is a suite of tools designed to aid an assist webmasters in the day to day operation of their site. I have an account but I have never used this thing. Getting rid of it won’t hurt a bit.

Adsense

I saved the big one for last. Adsense of course is Google’s ad selling program which allows us to make a few extra dollars. For most people when I say “few” I mean just that. If I sold the current Google Adsense slot at the top of each post (see it here to get an idea of where it is) would anyone be interested in advertising there? It appears on every individual page that loads. I get 500+ unique visitors a day with 2500 page views a day. Not tons but it might be worth your effort to advertise something there.

My next question is how will not using these things affect me? Will there be any negative impact? For the most part I don’t believe so. For example selling the adspace directly to someone has been proven time and time again a much better idea than trying to monetize with adsense. The rest of those services aside from email and analytics have pretty much no bearing on blogging at all. If you believe I’ve forgotten something, that there is reason not to dump any of those programs please leave a comment about it in this posting!

I’ve saved this for very last. Delisting of this site on Google. There’s other search engines out there, but Google is the “big boy” on the block. I get less than 3% of my traffic from Google searches. I’ve never bothered to optimize for SEO. If I was to delist myself how much of a problem would that cause me in the future? Can I make up the Google traffic via another search engine or source? I believe I can, but more feedback would be great.

Posted in Blogging | 5 Comments »

Dealdotcom: Niche Mastery

Dealdotcom: Niche Mastery

Today’s special offer from Dealdotcom is Niche Mastery.

What does it do?

There are a long list of benefits to this software some of which include:

• How to increase traffic to your web site
• Build your opt-in list
• Make money using viral marketing
• Create a saleable information product in an hour or less
• Create an information product even if you don’t know anything about the topic
• Package digital product as a physical product (which has a higher perceived value and much greater profit margin)
• How to double (or even triple) your income from Google AdSense

How much does it cost?

Normally it sells for 397.00, but if you order through my affiliate link with dealdotcom I can offer you a sales price of 233.30! Keep in mind that this offer is only good today as it is actually through Dealdotcom which honors that pricing. But you’ll be saving $163.70 by ordering this product through my affiliation with Dealdotcom!

I’m still not convinced…

There’s a money back offer if you try the product for 60 days and find it does not work out for you. In addition the creator of the program will send you a free $50.00 check just for trying out the product on top of refunding 100% of the purchase price. What’s to be convinced about? Either you’ll make money from using the product, or you’ll make $50 for trying it out.

Ok I’ll give it a try how do I order it?

Order it by following my affiliate link and following the directions once you reach there.

Posted in Making Money | 2 Comments »