I started writing for Desperate Curiosity August of 2007. While it hasn’t been such a long time, this blog has witnessed my growth as a professional blogger. My struggles in trying to learn the ropes while advising people on what I learn at the same time are all chronicled here. It’s been quite a journey for me, and while I cannot condense everything I’ve written in a couple of paragraphs, here is a summarization of all advices I’ve dispensed so far.

1. Building your own blog isn’t so hard. Of course, you’d have to choose between using free or paid blogging platforms, and after that, choose your blog design, but all in all, it’s very enjoyable. Or you can hire a blog techie to take care of all the backend stuff for you.

2. Of course, if you don’t want to build your own blog, you can always blog for others. Finding a blogging gig requires you to be knowledgeable about your topic and the mechanics of blogging though, so make sure you still know the basics.

3. Writing posts is the easy part if you know your niche well, but there are times when you just have an eclipse of ideas and you don’t know what to write. When you’re inspired and can think of a lot of ideas for posts, make sure to save some for rainy days.

4. Don’t forget to network constantly and form working relationships with other bloggers. Social bookmarking web sites are your friends.

5. There are times when you over-commit, and get sick, you know you need a vacation. Don’t forget to rest too!

6. You have to manage your time when you handle multiple blogs and need to speed blog. It takes a while getting used to, but you’ll get it after a while.

7. Last of all, never forget to have fun with what you’re doing or it won’t be worth all the effort.

Hope you learned something from everything I’ve written since the start. Thanks for dropping by Desperate Curiosity to read my work. I wish you all the best in your future blogging endeavors.

I used to blog around 12 hours per day, 7 days per week last year. My life revolved around blogging and blogging some more. My mom was concerned with the kind of life I was living — after all, after work, I sleep, and when I wake up, it’s back to work again. It’s a never-ending cycle many of those who problog full time experience. When you get sucked into being a work-a-holic, it’s hard to get out, believe me. I’m sure even those with 9 to 5 jobs get what I’m trying to say. It’s especially hard because sometimes, there are no boundaries between your personal and work life, what with many probloggers working at home.

However, a few months later, when I started becoming ill for periods of time, I realized the mistake I was making. If I didn’t get my life back, or at least get a bit of rest, I’ll definitely kick the bucket soon. After a while, I had to decide to rest during the weekends. It was imperative for me to be able to recover. Miraculously, I got in the same amount of work despite shaving hours off of my usual workday and the whole weekend altogether.

Bloggers need rest because:

1. Health problems may arise.

2. You’ll work better and faster with a rested mind.

3. You might lose real life friends in process.

4. You need time for other things in life.

5. You’re also human.

Since I’ve started resting, I realized that I’m a much happier and healthier person. Whereas before I was always cranky, I can manage to joke every once in a while now. Don’t be tempted to stop living life even if you earn from blogging. Create a proper balance and you’ll definitely feel better.

If you own a news blog in any niche, you’d understand how hard it is when I say that finding original stories for your blog might be a bit difficult. It’s so much easier to surf to other blogs and gather stories from them, but you don’t always want to play second fiddle to other blogs now, do you? You have to find ways to gather original stories. Here are the places where I usually get mine:

(Due to the numerous web sites mentioned below, you would need to google them yourselves to find the URLs.)

1. Press Release Distribution Sites

There are many PR distribution web sites to choose from, but my favorites would be PR Newswire and Business Wire. You can select from the numerous categories and add their feeds to your RSS reader.

2. Search Engines

Yahoo News and Google News are your friends. Between the two, I must say I favor Yahoo News more, although both could definitely help you out.

3. Online Newspapers

Reuters has a web site. So does The New York Times and Daily Mail UK, just to mention a couple.

4. News-syndicating sites.

You can try Slashdot for tech stories and Newsvine for everything else.

5. Word of mouth.

As you continue writing for your niche, there might be times when someone would tip you about a lead.

These are but a few of the places where I usually troll for leads. How about you? If you write for a news site, where do you get your stories from?

A recent Wired article talked about an electric car company which Wired said was a “hype-machine,” banking on their press releases for popularity, but falling short most of the time. This reminds me of those times when bloggers try to bring attention to their blogs through every means possible. While catching people’s attention on the onset is good (it provides you audience, after all), if you do nothing but heighten the hype of your blog, you won’t get loyal regulars. You don’t want your blog to be called “all hype and no substance” now, do you?

1. Limit your linkbaits.

Seriously. Sure, you’ve seen a huge spike on your traffic when you came up with a linkbait. Doesn’t mean you have to mimic the effort every day. Set a schedule for linkbaiting, such as doing it once every week.

2. Don’t stir up a huge controversy.

If you have a strong opinion about another person’s article and you decided to write about it, that’s one thing. But trying to rile other people up by writing controversial posts about their articles of themselves is another. Don’t try to write a linkbait with the purpose of making a select group of people hate you. Believe me, it’s not worth the effort. You’ll end up with a huge mess to clean afterwards.

3. Just write about what would contribute to other people’s knowledge.

Most of the time, you just have to write about what matters. Think of what your audience really needs to know and write about that. True, this tactic might not get you new readers at first, but it’ll definitely make your current readers stay. Also, in time, your blog could be known as a resource which newbies could refer to.

I know you use a CMS. I bet majority of you are used to WordPress’s WYSIWYG visual editor. However, that doesn’t mean you should totally forego trying to learn the basics of HTML coding. Those who have their own blogs have all the time to learn by experience. But for Probloggers for hire, you need to know the basics. I can’t count the number of job ads I see wherein you’re required to know the basics of HTML. There might be one gig which would require you to use other CMS than WordPress. Movable Type, for example, doesn’t have WYSISWYG editor. Although there are buttons meant for HTML coding, it’s still beneficial to know the codes behind them.

1. Bold text

<b>text here</b>
OR
<strong>text here</strong>

2. Italicized text

<i>text here</i>
OR
<em>text here</em>

3. Underlined Text

<u>text here</u>

4. Paragraph breaks

<p>paragraph here</p>

Adding the paragraph tags, for example, to two separate paragraphs would put them in paragraph form on the blog, whereas not doing so might mesh the two paragraphs together, depending upon your CMS.

5. Lists

For ordered lists: <ol>insert list here</ol>
For unordered bulleted lists: <ul>insert list here</ul>

To specify each element of the list, use: <li>element</li>

So, for example I’m making an unordered list, it would look like this:

<ul>

<li>element 1</li>
<li>element 2</li>
<li>element 3</li>

</ul>

6. Insertion of pictures:

<img src=”insert pic address here”>

7. Picture alignment

If you want your pics to be enveloped by text, you can use the “align” attribute. For example:

<img src=”insert pic address here” align=”left/right/center”>

8. Insertion of links

<a href=”insert link here”>Anchor text or the text that would appear visible onscreen</a>

9. Opening links on a new window

Insert the term target=”_blank” inside the codes bracket.

<a href=”insert link here” target=”_blank”>Anchor text</a>

I’ve mentioned building your own blog time and time again here, but I realize I never really laid it down in detail. When building your own blog, you can opt for free blogging platforms such as Blogger or WordPress.com. If you’re using those, you don’t exactly need much help, as they’re very easy to use. However, it can be a bit confusing for a complete newbie to delve into self-hosted blogging. Here’s a simple checklist for you to follow:

1. Decide on a Niche.

The first thing to think of when you plan to build your own blog is your niche. If you’re already an expert on a subject, then that’s no problem. But for those who’re only just starting and have a variety of interest, there’s much to decide.

2. Look for a web host.

Read around for the web host which you think would suit your needs perfectly. Go for general web hosts. You won’t be needing VPNs or private servers anytime soon.

3. Think of a Name for your Blog.

As trivial as it sounds, the name of your blog is important for branding. Think of something catchy, something which could catch readers’ attention yet capture the essence of your blog.

4. Buy Domain Name.

You can now think of a domain name and buy one. Make sure the domain name you think of isn’t owned by anybody yet by checking on a Whois service. I’d recommend using .com, .net, or .org, and steering away from the .info names. You should also decide where to buy domain names from. Although you can probably purchase them off of your web host, I won’t recommend you do so. In case you get into conflict with your host, your domains might be locked in. I’d advise using GoDaddy, Netfirms, or Namecheap instead.

5. Decide on the CMS to be used.

There’s Wordress, Movable Type, and Typepad, to name a few. I’d recommend WordPress since it’s the most user-friendly and has got tons of free templates available online.

6. Do basic SEO on the Blog.

You don’t need to be an expert. Just the usual SEO techniques such as title tags, header tags, keyword density, etcetera, would do at first. Of course, don’t forget link building.

7. Write your preliminary content.

Before you promote your blog, write some preliminary content so people have something to read when they click through. First impressions last, so put great thought on what you write for your blog.

8. Promote

After everything, you can now start promoting. Do some social networking and social bookmarking, as I always say.

Monetization efforts might come later when you’re more used to tweaking your blog. One of the most newbie-friendly type of monetization effort is Google Adsense. All you need to do is apply for an account, and once you get approved, you can start earning money. Of course, there are different ways to increase your Adsense income, but that’s a topic for another post.

Probloggers can either blog for others or blog for themselves. I do both, although I find myself leaning towards blogging for others — not because I think it’s better, but because it can actually be much easier, provided you work for a client who’s easy to get along with. Both ways of earning money through blogging have their own pros and cons:

Blogging For Others

Pros

1. You’re ensured payment for your time if you’re working for a flat rate per post.

2. If the blog you’re writing for is already established, you’re also ensured readership.

3. You can ask your clients to be your references when looking for blogging gigs.

4. You can learn the ropes of blogging while writing for others.

5. If you’re working with a good editorial team, you’d learn what clicks with readers and what doesn’t.

6. You’re spared the humongous task of getting others to link to you. Although you’ll still have the responsibility of promoting your blog, bookmarking your posts, and the like, but you’ll likely be doing less of what your client does.

Cons

1. When you write for performance-based pay, you can earn more than what you earn for a flat fee per post. However, even with established sites, you might not get to earn at all.

2. You might be working with a difficult editor.

3. Some clients could turn out to be deadbeats.

4. You might get censored by your editors sometimes.

5. There are times when you have no control over what you write.

Blogging For Yourself

Pros

1. You get complete control of everything you want to put on the web site.

2. You get to write when you want.

3. You can change anything about the blog anytime you see fit to do so.

4. You control the monetization scheme of your blog.

5. You get to keep everything you earn.

Cons

1. You get to build your blog from scratch.

2. You have to increase readership, yourself.

3. You have to figure out how to tackle tech problems on your own.

4. Should you decide to hire other bloggers, or a tech person to oversee blog tweaks, the money will come out of your own pocket.

5. You might not earn from your monetization efforts for a long, long time.

6. You might not be as motivated to update your blog.

Blogging is fun either way, but if given a choice between the two, which one would you choose? As for me, I’ll still go with both and try to balance things out so that I can write for my clients and earn, as well as write for my own.

Are you blog-happy? Do you buy domains every day and create blogs incessantly because you have a whole pool of ideas? Have you waken up one day to realize you’re already maintaining 20+ blogs and the number is still growing?

I know someone who literally had hundreds of domains. I realize that some have thousands more. But you see, this person I know doesn’t use his domains for business. He bought them because he wanted to make them all into blogs. What does one exactly do when he’d over-committed?

1. Outsource.

If you have the budget for it, hire other bloggers for some of your other domains. Who knows? You might have actually started a network of your own. Just be informed that having several active blogs means you might have to move to a bigger or better host. If you decide to go this route, make sure you have the money to spend, and the drive to try and recoup your investments. In the long run, of course you’d want to earn from your efforts, but keep your goals simple at first.

2. Schedule accordingly.

Think you can still handle all your existing blogs? Make sure to schedule accordingly. Find out what works for you when handling multiple blogs and stick to what you’ve decided upon.

3. Have someone else manage the blog for free, but majority of the ad revenues go to them.

If you don’t have the resources to create a small network of your own, you can get other people to manage the blog for free, but the revenues go to them as payment. Hey, at least there’s something going on in your domains, right? Also, once the blogs become popular, you can get sponsors for them, with which you can earn and recoup what you spend for hosting.

4. Give up a few domains.

Be realistic. If you really can’t handle all your domains and you can’t afford to have other people blog for them, sell a few domain names. If you happen to have premium domains and you make a bit of money from them, you can use those as capital to outsource some blogging duties.

Blogging is so much fun that there are people who really tend to over-commit. Every time you’re inclined to buy a new domain name, ask yourself if it’s really worth it.

Blogging is fun. I wouldn’t do it if it’s not. Not only do I get to write, I get to meet a lot of new people from around the globe, rub elbows with celebs, talk to people I wouldn’t have had the chance to otherwise. However, just like in every other profession, there are times when you lose focus. No matter how hard you try, there are days when no topic comes to mind (haven’t I mentioned creating editorial calendars time and time again?). As humans, it’s natural for your sight to stray at times. It’s all up to you to get back on track and recognize what’s really important.

Here are some things you could do to increase or get back your focus:

1. Practice focusing on a single idea / entity everyday.

One technique I use which could also help with my memory is memorizing cards. Every day, I pick a card from the deck and focus on what it is. The next day, I pick another card so I have to remember two. The day after that, I pick yet another card, so I have to remember three values in the order I picked them. I do this everyday until the end of the month, wherein which I’d reset my memory.

2. Play games.

Sudoku and the classic Rubik’s cube are two games which could increase focus. Make it a habit to play these games a few minutes each day so your focus could get some exercise.

3. Meditate.

You don’t have to do yoga and bend your body all over the place. You can do simple, practical meditations. Say, if you’re feeling unfocused in front of the computer, you can close your eyes for a few minutes, matching it with rhythmic breathing. Clear your mind of any thoughts for a while so when you open your eyes, you feel fresh and more focused.

4. Exercise

No, really. Exercising helps keep the blood flowing. It clears your brain and shakes off any kind of lethargic feeling you might have.

5. List down your schedule for the day.

If you have a set schedule for set hours during the day, tape it somewhere where you can get a glimpse out of it every passing hour. The more you’re reminded that you have to finish something by this time, the more you’re forced to focus.

6. Use an alarm clock.

You can set it to ring after every task you have to finish. The downside is, your flow of thoughts might be interrupted, just in case what you’re doing is taking longer that what you’ve expected.

How about you? How do you keep focused?

A friend who knows I blog for a living called my attention and pointed me to a column which called blogging a “slacker job.” While I would love to link to the article to show you its entirety, I’d rather not link to the web site as that would give them traffic. Anyhow, I won’t be discussing the whole article, but the point that blogging is seen by some as a “slacker job.” Hmmm…if you’ve been following my posts here, what do you think is my opinion of problogging? Even just reading through what I’ve written makes me exhausted with the things I have to do just to maintain a single blog.

Let’s examine why non-bloggers see problogging as a slacker job, shall we?

1. Many probloggers work at home.
2. Bloggers might have deadlines but we make our own hours.
3. We can type up posts and publish anywhere we are in the world. No need to report to editors in person.
4. We can work wearing anything we want.
5. We use informal and friendly voice when blogging.
6. Some print journalists just won’t take us seriously no matter how hard we try.
7. Many people just don’t know there’s such a thing as a professional blogger.

Problogging, a slacker job? Ha. Just look at what we have to do regularly:

1. We have to come up with a niche we want to write about.
2. We have to constantly find ideas to write about every single day.
3. We need to find the right monetization model for our blogs.
4. We need to organize our own time and multi-task.
5. We don’t only have to network, we also have to use social bookmarking web sites.
6. We have to deal with trolls.
7. Sure, print journalists might have a set of guidelines to follow, but we have to constantly watch what we say or else we’ll be getting flak from all over the world.
8. We have to constantly watch out for content thieves.
9. And basically, we do all of the above over and over again, sometimes all on our own.

Whew. Just listing all those got me dizzy. Sure, I did say before that problogging is equivalent to freedom for me. However, that doesn’t mean it’s a job for slackers. When someone tells you something similar, show them this post — maybe they’ll learn something from it.