Some tips and tricks to find something to write about:

1: Sometimes it’s best just to step away from the keyboard and take a walk around the block or watch some TV or listen to some good music. Anything that will get you away from the computer and come back to a fresh start.

2: Jot down a few ideas/titles and go though and think on each one an see which you like the best.

3: Carry around a tape recorder or your mobile phone (if it has this function) incase an idea comes along. Ideas can pop-up at anytime so its best to keep them stored some how so you don’t forget.

4: Go read a book or magazine. Something may catch your attention or open up your creative ability.

5: Read though other blogs with in your niche. This may start a few sparks.

6: Post a rambling post on your day instead.

7: Post some link love or share your top sites with your readers.

8: Find a new tool or programs and play around with it and write a review.

9: Surf Article sites.

10: Communicate with other bloggers. They may have an idea or two that might be useful.

11: Collaborate with another blogger on a post.

10: Find a guest poster so you can have time to gather your thoughts.

11: Ask your readers what the would like to learn or see on your site. A good way to get ideas and meet your readers needs at the same time. Asking questions never hurts.

12: Check out HitTail.com it will search terms and keywords of your site and give you suggestions to write about.

13: Revisit and old post and add new information.

14: Open up notepad and just start typing what ever comes to mind, or just stare at it.

15: When all else fails… Go to bed and start fresh the next day.

There are a few ideas to start with and get you motivated if you are stuck in a blogging writer block. Some may work differently for different people, but you just have to see what works best for you. Keeping a blog up-to-date on a regular basis is a lot of work and can really burn you down, so I hope these tips may help anyone stuck in this situation.

Wrote this as a guest post a while back. Though I would share it on here.

a

Finding Movitation to Blog.

Episodes come from well known bloggers and webmasters that I’m sure a few of you know or have heard of including: SEO Rockstar, The Pulse, Shoemoney, The Hook, Affiliate Marketing Insider, ad:tech, Blog Buzz and many more touching on a wide variety of topics. You can check the listings to see more of the other people involved in the shows and get a line up of all the live shows that are going to be airing soon. There is also some music to enjoy when there are no live shows.

You can listen to the station with almost any media player available. So you are not missing out on listening to the shows. There is also a Desktop application you can download to connect you to the station and get live streaming, chat, and upcoming shows. You can even subscribe to the feed with your podcatcher or iTunes and listen to the shows though your iPod or Mp3. Webmaster Radio makes it easy for you to stay connected to all the shows you want to hear so you are not missing out.

Though they are an affiliate, the Webmaster Radio stood out when I was looking though partners and though it deserved a post so I could share this with you. It seems like a great place to learn a few new things and listen to what some of the pros have to say. A subscription that costs $28.73/month and you get unlimited access to all the shows, 100% Commercial Free, on-demand content, archives, chat and everything else they have to offer. The good news though you can check it out for free with commercials.

Search Marketing Internet Radio Streaming 24-7! Sign Up Today At WebmasterRadio.fm!

a

WebmasterRadio.FM – Get your fix

Switching your domain using Wordpress
The process did not take to awfully long, and if you come to run in to the same problem I did or just want to switch a domain name here are some things that I did to switch over. I think the whole process of switching over only took me around 3-4 hours, but I had to look for all the information that I am sharing, so it will probably take you half the time to do all of this. There are longer methods with a long process, but this is what I did and the time was not to bad to get it all done and it worked fine.

New Domain
The first thing is to get your new domain name and set it to the same folder as your old one. No need to move folders, backups or anything like that. If you want to feel safe before doing any of this though you can backup your Wordpress files and Database. You can try the Backup Plugin from Skippy.

301 Redirect
Next you need to set up a 301 redirect. A 301 is a permanent redirect. You can find methods here on different types of redirect methods. Another option for Wordpress users there are a few plugins that may help you along. Permalink Redirect Plugin or the Redirect Plugin. I did not test any of these so I would suggest you read the pages to see if they are right for what you are doing. The easiest way I found was just doing it though .htaccess.

Changing Uploaded Images and URLs in the Database
Then there was the problem of all the images and post still showing up as blogging4cash.com on the site. I looked for an easy way to switch all instances of blogging4cash to blogtomic in the Database. The method I found to change all this data was from Michael.biven.com, if you go down to Importing The Data, there are a few MySQL functions that will help you change the URLs in your database. The method worked great and all my post URLs and uploaded images now had the new domain name with in the database and on the site.

Now for the other stuff:
Once you have changed your domain name and have your database all squared away, you might want to go in and check you Affiliate and Ad Network accounts and other accounts like Entrecard, Sitehoppin, BlogCatalog and all thous to change your account to your new URL. Also ask people linking to you to also make this change so that you can gain a few linkbacks.

a

Switching Domain Names with Wordpress

How it Works
It’s pretty basic to get started and only takes around 24 hours to get your campaign approved then you can add you funds and select how much you would like to spend per day. The cost is $0.05 per visitor that visits your site. And you can pay though Paypal or Credit Card.

Once you have your campaign running visitors then see your site while using the StumbleUpon toolbar when they are stumbling though sites that are geared towards your set categories and there interest. They they can either give your site a thumbs up or down or just stumble to the next site. I’m not to sure that the voting is actually displayed though the regular stumble page for your site as I have not seen any new stumblers on the site but they show up in the campaign feedback.

Is it worth it?
I did not see what I really expected, but I did only try it with $10 so it’s hard to really say. I think it’s a great idea and could bring in a lot of organic stumbled traffic. Kinda disappionted to see it doesn’t see to work with the regular StumbleUpon stumbles when someone give you a thumbs up, as that would definitely generate a lot more traffic. Which might be a good thing if you get few dislikes which seems to happen to. I set the campaign for my main page. After reading a few tips it looks like the best thing to do is to set it for a single post, so I may have to do that the next go around and see if it works differently.

Testing other options
The best thing to do is try and test different ways to see if this will work better or more effectively, and trying different pages to see how they work compared to other pages. There is also the possibility of users just surfing though StumbleUpon and quickly by-passing your site so your out a few cents. Probably making your site as appealing as possible or make sure to have your campaign on your best post may catch more peoples attention and draw in a few extra readers.

In Conclusion
400 visitors for $10 is not to bad and its not to good either, but you could pay a lot more with other networks. and if you look at it 1000 visitors will cost you $50. It seems a bit high when you think in a bigger price range. If its worth it our not, I can’t say with such a quick run, but some traffic is always better than none. Problogger has a great little article on things you should and shouldn’t do when running a StumbleUpon campaign with some other good tips. You might want to check it out and read his opinion also.

Sign up and start a campaign. 

a

Advertising with StumbleUpon

Only working post and less on other parts of your blog like marketing, networking, advertising is not that effective if no one is reading your blog. You may find that setting a few goals and having a good plan for your blog will give you a chance to manage your time. Even with a good long term plan a successful blog will never happen overnight or over a few weeks. Building up your blogs success and profit will take time. Staying committed with your blog though the rough period of starting up and staying motivated with your goals will help you maintain a more noticeable blog for your readers.

So the next thing to figure out is what parts of your blog you need to work on and how to manage your time and what milestones you need to set to archive these goals. If you decide you are wanting to be a full time blogger try to spend at-least 4-8 hour a day or more on your blog as you would if you are working for a regular job. Set you how much time you are going to spend doing certain jobs around your blogging like time you will spend posting, research, networking, marketing, reading other blogs, ext.. These are a good starting point for your daily goals.

Going in to short term and long term goals for your blog you may want to set a few milestones to archive these desired goals. These goals can be anything you would like to archive from redesigning your blog, testing a new ad network or affiliate program, trying out a new marketing strategy, see how many readers you can achieve in a months time, set up a advertising campaign, and so on.

As I did a little research myself I was looking for a tool to help out with managing my time online and how much time I spend doing certain things on a daily basis and other tools to help with achieving goals and found some great tools to help. Here are some sites and tools you can check out to help you achieve your short term and long term goals while blogging or anything else in your life.

SlimTimer
SlimTimer was the software I found to help me keep track of my time online and how long I spend doing things. It’s simple to use and is easy to set up. All you do is set up your activities and when you are doing one you select it and it will keep your time spent on that project.It also keeps a nice report of all your activities in a report so you can view the time you have spent on each activity though out the day, week, month, per task, etc. An the good part of this software is its free.

TimeTracker Firefox
This is a firefox addon that you can use to keep track of your time browsing. you can track your browsing across a time session, pause it, reset the timer, etc. It really doesnt keep track of anything but your browsing time but this could be good to see how much time you spend reading blogs or doing research.

Toggl
Toggl is a time tracking service that has a nice free service along with a paid service. The free service offers a lot of great options and the service also has a desktop application that you can install to connect to the server.

Time-tracker
A simple tracker to keep track on the time you spend on task.

Project2manage
Project2manage is a free project management tool to help you keep and organize projects, create milestones and stay on task. A lot of great features and a free alternative to similar projects like basecamp.

Goalmigo
Goalmigo allows you to set your goals, track the progress of your goals, share your goals with friends, and you can join groups to connect with others with similar goals.

AimsVille
AimsVille lets you create goals, share your goals and progress with other and communicate with other users with similar goals and interest.

MyProgress
MyProgress is a personal progress manager with a lot of great management tools that help you track and analyze your productivity, success, wealth progress, skills, knowledge, health and more. With MyProgress you can watch your progress and discover your productivity at any period, any time, any place.

Paid Task and Project Management Servies
There are a few services out there that allow you to keep track of your projects, task and milestones. They can be used for individual goal setting and keeping track of everything. Most have a price but offer a free account with limited usage. You can check in to a few if you are interested. BaseCamp, Tick, ActionThis, ActiveCollab, and Harvest.

There are lots of applications and services that are out there to help you with your time management, achieve and setting goals. All this is great to help you get motivated, but the only person that can achieve your goals is you. You really do not need fancy software, it can help, but the old fashion way with a pen, paper, calendar and some sticky notes on the fridge might work just as well.

a

Achieving your blog goals

Sprout Builder

Sprout was one of the first I came across that is probably my top pick so far for building a nice web widget. Sprout allows you to build a custom looking widget from scratch or start by a few templates. You can drag and drop many different components and images, videos, rss, slideshows, chipin and more to your design. The process is not to hard once you figure out all the elements and how it works. After you have created your widget Sprout makes it easy for you to publish your widget straight to your blog or social network and distribute it though a few widget databases like Spring Widgets and Clearspring. After your widget is set up it is easy for your readers to copy and add it to there own site or blog. If you update your widget again there is no need to redistribute it, the widget will instantly update. I’m working on one now though this service for The SEOtree that will hopefully be available soon.
Start Building

Spring Widgets

Spring Widgets has a nice little Widget generator that you can build for an RSS feed. It is a fairly simple generator but looks nice and you can add a custom header to brand it for your site. The Spring Widget also allows readers to add the widget to there blog, social network, Google Homepage (igoogle) and if the reader has the Spring Widgets platform they can even add your widget to there desktop. Even further Spring Widgets also has a SDK kit and tutorials of creating more advanced widgets for people interested in developing there own.
Start Building

Widgetbox

Widgetbox has another quick and easy generator for you to create a widget from a flash file, html/js, webpage, Blog/Feed, or from a Google gadget. The generator allows your add a few different setting like the color, layout type (two options), and your header style and image. The widget like the others also allows readers to quickly get the code to display the widget on there blog, social network or Igoogle.
Start Building

Some Other Widget Options:

Widgetize
Widgetize is a Widget Generator to make widgets for Opera users.

AmnestyWidgets
Amnesty has a few applications for converting web widgets into gadgets for your Vista or OSX sidebar, or the Hypercude for adding widgets from the web to your desktop for Windows and OS x.

WyaWidget
WyaWidget is a Widget creator for Igoogle. See more Informatin here.

Widget Builder
Widget Builder is a software for building standalone widgets for desktops. I hae not tried it out so if you are interested you can give it a go. The price is $69.

Create an amazing widget
A flash tutorial from abduzeedo.com on creating an Rss widget in flash.

Yahoo Widget SDK
Develop widgets for the Yahoo Widget Engine. I could not find any real helpful easy tutorials but it would be a good start if you want a Desktop widget.

This is a good starting point for anyone wanting to create a widget for your blog or site and gain a little more traffic from a free marketing solution. Start building one today and see which service works the best for you when it comes to what your needs are for simplicity and design.

a

Building a web Widget for your blog.

Creating a Google Toolbar Button for Your Blog
This is a tutorial from learningmovabletype.com that I found to be useful when you and to create a nice little button with search and RSS options for the Google Toolbar. The steps are easy to follow and it walks you though every-step from your icon to uploading it to the Google button submission form.
Read this tutorial here.

GOOGLE TOOLBAR BUTTON BUILDER
This is an online generator to make building your Google toolbar button with out writing any code, or it is good to use as a starting point in creating your own button. The generator only takes a few minutes to create your new button code and allows you to ad custom navigation, RSS feed, and custom search powered by Google, send and update capabilities.
Start Building your Button now.

Firefox Toolbar Tutorial
Borngeek has a in-depth tutorial on creating a full FireFox toolbar. This tutorial will give you an overview of how to create a Firefox extension. This will be a good starting point if you are looking to create a full toolbar for your blog. The tutorial is rather lengthy but worth the read.
Take a look at the tutorial here.

Community Toolbar
Conduit is a free community toolbar builder. It allows you to create and design your toolbar right in your browser. There are a lot of great features in this program and worth a look if you are interested in building a full toolbar in a matter of minutes. They have a full list of addons including search, RSS, branding and design, radio players, gadget boxes, email notifiers,chat, menus and more.
Start creating your toolbar now.

Toolbar Studio
This one is a program. I found it really easy to use and it allows you to create toolbars for Firefox and IE. The program is priced at $75, but there is a free version (but it leaves a watermark). I used this program for The SEOtree Social Toolbars. It was easy to understand and did what I needed it to do in around an hour or so of playing around I had the toolbar the way I wanted it to work.
Take a look at the Toolbar Studio.

A toolbar or toolbar button is a great idea if you want to give your readers another way to interact with your blog. Your readers will be a click away from your blog and latest post. In the future I may take a look at Desktop bar builders, I am taking a look into those now.

a

Creating a Toolbar for your blog

Blogging for money is an awesome way to make some extra cash and market yourself or your brand. But making money blogging doesn’t happen overnight. World renowned marketeer Seth Godin talks about “The Dip.” The dip is the point where you either continue and pass everyone else or count your losses and move on. This is why you always hear about the person with a dream that carried him through until he made his big break.

The truth is that unless you have some good startup money in the blogging world, you really have to earn the page views and subscribers you get. Blogging has a set of milestones unlike any other Internet venture. First, you have to get traffic, then subscribers, then a lot more of both. About that time, you will start making decent money. Eventually, you could be pulling in $1-2K a day on average from all of your online ventures. Take a look at all of the A-list bloggers you know and ask yourself, “How long have they been doing this?” The answer is going to be at least one year and probably a lot longer for most. They didn’t just wake up one day and start making $30K a month, so you shouldn’t expect to either.

I recommend starting with a simple exercise to boost your blogging stats to help achieve your first milestone. Remember, goals are a great thing to have. I post mine on my site every month so everyone knows what I am aiming for. For the next 30 days, your goal should be to write a post every day on your blog. You do not have to write them each day, but post one a day for the next 30 days. I typically do a couple posts at once because I am in the writing mode and like to go with it. So start your 30-day challenge and show that you have what it takes to make your money online.

a

Blogging is a marathon

Jason, from blogging4cash asked me to do a guest post for him and while thinking of the topic I would cover, it sprang to mind to do little post on the actual benefits of – guest blogging.

I’m sure many of you have seen more than one blog with guest writers. From what I can tell it seems to be the biggest thing since sliced bread in the blogshpere these days. I instantly recognized the benefit of having guest writers and would be more than happy to share my thoughts on this with you.

The guest blogger

Being the guest writer is beneficial for more than one reason. Firstly, you get your name out there. One thing anyone that is trying to develop a successful blog needs to realize from the onset is the importance of developing their brand recognition.

Just like when you hear the word Porsche, you immediately think of a sports car – Nike sparks thoughts of tennis shoes, Sprite – soda, and so on… When someone sees your name (or the name of your blog) you need them to immediately think of you (or your blog – whichever you choose to brand). This is a task John chow and ProBlogger have exceeded in, developing their brand name recognition. It is without a doubt one of the most essential things needed to become more than just another average blog. And even if you’re not planning on being, or doubt you could be (and you never know…) as big a name as Porsche, you need to try. You need to always be working on your branding.

Beyond just developing your brand recognition, guest blogging also provides a vehicle for people to discover your blog. In almost all guest blogging situations you will be permitted (usually invited) to provide a link back to your own blog. In fact, many blogs that have repeat guest bloggers will put up a profile page with the guest blogger’s information; including links to all the posts they have guest blogged in the past and a link to the guest blogger’s own site (this backlink will also help the guest blogger’s natural or “organic” search engine results too!)

So, as a guest blogger you have the potential to gain: Additional exposure, valuable name branding, an increase in traffic to your blog, and the potential to achieve better search engine results through the addition of valuable backlinks to your blog. If you are ever presented with the opportunity to write as a guest blogger – do it! There’s soooo much to gain
The Host Blog

Having guest bloggers on your blog can be very beneficial for a few reasons too. First and foremost, you get free and relevant content on your blog. That sounds nice doesn’t it?

One factor to maintaining a successful blog is posting consistently! There is no question that in order to achieve and maintain a successful blog you need to have at least one post every single day (or two . Coming up with new ideas on a daily basis can be tough – we all admit this. Another issue can simply be a lack of time (as is the case with Jason today). There’s no shame in this game, if you don’t have the time to write – ask for help, get a guest blogger to do it for you.

Another benefit to having a guest blogger is the second opinion on your blog and fresh writing style you get. It can be beneficial to offer your readers more then just your opinion on the subject(s) your blog focuses on written in the style you’re used to. In this manner, the guest blogger can provide additional value to your readers. As the old adage goes; “two heads are better than one”. Think about it; if Time magazine had only one contributing writer – would it be successful? Probably not… Would it still publish an issue every single week? No way…
It really is a Win-Win for all involved

If you’re looking for an easy way to help your blog find a bit more exposure, add new content with a fresh style, boost your SEO efforts, and help to create a brand name for yourself, you may consider inviting a guest blogger to write for you and offer to post a few guest spots for any bloggers you know. It really is win-win.

a

Guest bloggers?

The software has a few key features that are pointed out by Adam.

• Plays a sound whenever a person reviews your discoveries
• Plays a sound when one of your discoveries is liked
• Displays a list of your discoveries on StumbleUpon
• Shows a list of people who have rated your sites
• Lists all of the reviews for your discoveries
• Ranks your friends in order of most reviews
• Made with the same interface as StumbleUpon

The program is easy to use and only takes a few mins to install and set it up. So you can start viewing your stumbled post in less than 5 mins.

Once you have installed it and opened up the program you simply add your StumbleUpon ID name and how many post you would like to activly watch. Along with the option to start the program when Windows starts or play a sound when a post is reviewed.

The next thing you want to do is add your URLs that you want to keep track of. You can go to the Edit menu at the top and a box will appear to add your URL. And simply type in the address you want like: http://yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com/your-post.

Then you will have a list of the sited you have added and be able to scroll though them to see the names of users who have reviewed those pages along with the number of thumbs up and reviews. The reviews of the post also show at the bottom of the program.

A few other options include the people tab that allows you to see the full list of people that have stumbled the pages you are watching, and the website tab that shows the main URL of the post and how many stumbled it has for all of the watched post.

This is a great tool for any active StumbleUpon user that wished to easily keep track of there site and post on StumbleUpon. It sure bets having to open up a web browser and looking up each individual post.

You can get the StumbleUpon Alerter here. Happy Stumbling.

a

Track your post with Stumbleupon Alerter