7 Deadly Sins of Blogging

November 12, 2009 by  
Filed under Blogging, Freelance Advice

Guest blogger Jimi Olaghere is a young business owner who runs Broke Tycoon, a blog and forum with advice for business and marketing techniques.

seven-deadly-sinsSeems like everyone is a blogger these days, publishing articles on personal or freelance business blogs, updating statuses on twitter – even commenting on previously written articles. Face it, we’re blogging. But how can we stand out in a sea of keyboard happy drones? Repent from these sins and maybe the blog Gods will forgive you.

1. Pride
You can’t do it on your own, or maybe you can; don’t get me wrong, self belief is a good thing. But when you are starting a blog, one of the fastest ways to increase traffic is to partner up with other bloggers. Link exchange, link backs, shared links, they all work; find one that’s compatible with your niche then blog happy.

2. Envy
All blogs are not created equal, there is never going to be another gossip blog like Perez Hilton’s. Many have tried, but it’s still not the same. The faster you realize that you can’t imitate other successful blogs, the sooner your blog will become successful. So go out there and do your own thing, in fact look at what everyone is doing and do the exact opposite; you’ll be surprised with the results.
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Why Guest Blogging is a Powerful Way to Gain Exposure for Your Blog

September 17, 2009 by  
Filed under Blogging, Freelance Advice

guest-bloggingEvery blogger has been there: you’ve been blogging for a few weeks, but not many people other than your close friends and relatives every stop by.

You ask your readers a question, and the response is a resounding silence. You need to find ways to gain exposure for your young blog.

And guest blogging is one of the most powerful ways of doing that.

When I first started Zen Habits, I faced this challenge, just like everyone else does. “I’m writing great stuff,” I would say to myself, “but no one is reading it. What do I do?”

I tried guest blogging, and it paid off big time. I now regrettably have to turn down requests to write guest posts elsewhere, just because I’m so busy writing. I wish I didn’t have to, because every time I do, I miss an opportunity, but there’s no question that guest blogging has been a major part of my success.

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5 Internet Marketing Techniques You’d Be A Fool Not To Practice

Guest blogger Jimi Olaghere is a young business owner who runs Broke Tycoon, a blog and forum with advice for business and marketing techniques.

internet-marketingIt’s no secret that the internet is a very saturated place. According to Archive.com, if you are planning to put some sort of content on the internet you have 85 billion competitors! Today’s internet users are nothing like the past, gone are days when the internet was used solely for informative purposes only. It should be no surprise to learn that today’s internet users want to be not only informed, but entertained as well.

So if you would like to learn a couple of outrageous marketing techniques that can keep you afloat while others are drowning, then read this article. But if your happy with the hopeless feeling you get when you check your web stats and don’t mind sinking to the bottom of the internet ocean, then why don’t you go ahead and click the red x button in the top right corner.
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Good to Great, Why some Blogs Succeed and Others Don’t

July 2, 2009 by  
Filed under Blogging, Freelance Advice

good-to-greatHave you ever wondered why some blogs engender the success that they do? Why Techcrunch has 1/2 of a million subscribers and charges $10,000 a month for a 125x125px ad? Or why more than 20,000 blogs have chosen to link to BoingBoing and 1,500 people have listed it as a Technorati favourite? Why the DailyKos received more than half a million visits a day and every post receives comments number with three digits? What sets these giants of their fields apart from the rest and why have they become some of the most well known blogs in the world? And how many questions can I ask in one paragraph?

What follows are my observations on what sets these blogs apart…

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Announcement: FreelancerMagazine and NorthxEast.com to Merge

July 1, 2009 by  
Filed under Blogging, Freelance Advice

northxeast-logoI am pleased to announce that NorthxEast.com and FreelancerMagazine.com will soon be merging and operating as one site. Our combination unites two complementary resources, with NxE aimed at providing advice and resources for independent bloggers, and FM providing additional resources on marketing, productivity, self-management, and more.
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Should Freelancers Be Blogging?

October 30, 2008 by  
Filed under Blogging, Freelance Advice, Marketing Resources

I wrote in a previous post on how freelancers could go about marketing their portfolio to potential clients. The first point made was that freelancers should try starting a blog of some kind which could include tutorials, resources and articles to attract people to visit in order to increase exposure. Without content, there is no reason for your portfolio to come up for the search terms you’d like on Google, less you look into SEO and do a bit of link building – although link building itself is useless without decent content, but more on that in another article.

Going back to the title of the post, the simple answer is yes, because there are a whole plethora of benefitting blogging could bring in terms of marketing to a freelancer’s portfolio.

I’m going to go into detail on what freelancers could potentially do with a blog if they choose to start one as an attachment to their portfolio.

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