Lorelle on WordPress » Writing

Blog Challenge: Describe Your Computer Setup - Then and Now

Lorelle VanFossen — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:38:42 +0000

This week’s blog challenge is to blog about your computer setup as it was “then” in the early days of your computer life, and how it is now, in your modern technology life.

What computer tools are you dependent upon for your blog that surround you on your desk? Do you podcast? What do you use? Video? Video streaming? What did you start with in the early days of podcasting and video, and now, what do you use for multimedia creation?

Over the years, my desk’s setup has changed, moving from huge desktop computers to smaller laptops, handheld computers, cell phones, and - well, smaller everything.

And I mean small. A friend just emailed me that she found a small SD digital card on the floor of her car. Thinking it was hers, she checked it out and found it had some of my video files. Don’t remember losing it, but how would I know? They weigh nothing and there is no room to put my name and email address on the card label, so they could be lost forever and never come back to me.

My desk was custom built for me by my husband and in the monitor base are two drawers, one for 3.5 disks and the other for CDs, perfectly sized. I still have a few CDs in there, but I haven’t seen a 3.5 disk in years. Instead, I have a ton of digital media cards in several shapes and sizes of various data storage sizes stacked like thin blue chicklets amid the colorful sticky note pads, stacks of business cards, tape, stamps, and junk I stuff in this open drawers.

Gone are the hundreds of meters of phone cord and the acoustic coupler we used to strap onto telephones and payphones to connect to the Internet, replaced by WIFI hi-gain and boosting PC cards and antennas. My huge and heavy desktop monitor that measured 32 inches (81 cm) deep is now replaced by a 1.5 inch (4 cm) thick large monitor.

Some things remain the same. My desk has stayed the same through more than fifteen years on the road in our trailer. While I don’t use a big desktop computer, the space is now taken up with a stack of portable hard drives - at least ten of them are currently hooked up with tons of USB connectors. Until a couple months ago, I was still using the small but very powerful Altec Lansing computer speakers and woofer, but it finally gave up after 16 years of hard life on the road. I replaced it with something only slightly smaller, but much more powerful.

Who lied to us about the magic of easier connections and wirelessness? I have a black snake jungle of wires under my feet and two more USB/Firewire snake infestations on either side of my desk connecting all the parts and pieces together. My mouse and keyboard are wireless, but everything still needs a cord! It’s a power brick building along the power strip.

Recently, I replaced 18 lbs (8 kg) of laptop and power brick with a little over 5 lbs (2.26 kg), lighting much of my travel load due to increased weight restrictions on US domestic air carriers. But I still carry too much computer crap with me, as I haul around portable hard drives, USB hubs, digital microphones and recorders, WIFI boosters, digital camera crap, and all their cords and connectors.

Don’t even get me started talking about the tangled black snake jungle I have to take with me every time I travel. Power bricks, USB cords, Firewire cords, custom cords, s-video cords, USB hubs, power strips…I keep trying to reduce it, in weight, number, and size, but I swear those black snakes are breeding in my travel bags!

I have two digital recorders, digital cameras, MP3 players, four printers, several USB hubs…I have more computer crap now than I did when everything was 10 times bigger.

Next week, I’ll challenge you about software, but this week, I want you to blog about the hardware that controls your life, what it looked like when you started, and how it has improved - or not - over the years.

As usual, send a pingback or trackback to this post, or put the link to your blog challenge post in the comments, so we can all see how you’ve done with your blog challenge.

Did you know that you don’t have to write these blog challenges? You can also use audio with podcasts or make a video in response to the blog challenge and publish it on your blog. There are a lot of ways you can have fun with these weekly blog challenges. Use your imagination and see how far you can take the challenge into territories you haven’t explored before.

These blogging challenges are published weekly and are an attempt to kick your blogging ass. They serve to challenge your thinking and efforts in blogging and blog writing. To participate, start challenging yourself now. Today. Go for it.

Past Blogging Challenges

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Lessons from LTPact 2008: Cloud Servers and Gambling

Lorelle VanFossen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:10:54 +0000

I spent the past few days in Las Vegas for the Layered Tech LTPact 2008 Conference, an event sponsored by Layered Tech, the second largest web hosting and reseller in the world, among WordPress luminaries and experts and a lot of server geeks and serious online business folks.

I got a chance to spend time with Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, co-founders of Woopra, the web analytics program that was the talk of WordCamp Dallas. They arrived from Lebanon only two days before landing in Vegas and were still jet-lagged and culture-shocked from what they had seen so far in the United States - not your normal introduction to this country. Their English is great, though they were nervous speaking it at first, and I was privileged to be the first to interview them. The exclusive interview will be featured on the next WordPress Podcast with Charles Stricklin, discussing how Woopra works and the Woopra API for WordPress Plugins.

I also learned a lot about what goes on under the hood of a blog or website, something we often forget about until our site crashes, goes offline, or the blog borks. One of the most exciting things I learned about is the new hosting service options by Layered Tech called the Cloud that bloggers need to know about.

In the past, if your site was dugg by Digg or linked to from Smashing Magazine, Engadget, BoingBoing, Mashable, or any other high traffic driving site, the typical server set up just couldn’t handle it. With improvements in WordPress and its cache system, and Plugins like Super Cache WordPress Plugin, these worries are a thing of the past - but not completely.

Layered Tech is offering Cloud technology with 3Tera that I think is going to change the way we host our blogs. Called on-demand IT infrastructure or the grid, you can have a flexible website structure, only paying for services you want and need, not having to pay for that which you do not use.

Cloud computing or storage is a networked data storage system using virtual servers rather than dedicated servers. Instead of having your data stored on a single server, it is networked across huge data centers, allowing the data resources to be larger or smaller, depending upon the customer needs.

The typical blogger gets a traffic spike once in a while and the demand on the server typically lasts for a few days and things drop back to a normal level. To accommodate such a demand, we used to have to sign up for web hosting at high levels in order to be ready for the spikes, even though they didn’t come around every day. This new system basically says why pay for what you don’t need, but when you need it, it’s there and you pay for what you use, not what you don’t. You can still upgrade your services when you need them, but this way, you won’t be caught off guard when your site is suddenly the center of attention.

Layered Tech works with a variety of resellers for web hosting services with the “pay as you need” service. According to the Layered Tech representatives I talked to during the conference, you set up your basic service, and if your needs exceed that minimum, the service will expand to meet the need and you will be notified and charged accordingly, and when it drops, the costs drop, too. In a way, this allows your hosting service to grow with you rather than against you.

WordPress.com runs on Layered Tech servers, and if you are self-hosted, I recommend you check with your web hosting provider to see if they are using Layered Tech servers or if their servers use virtual servers and cloud technology. It’s the future and if you are serious about the service your blog offers, you need to be investigating this technology.

What Else Did Lorelle Learn at LTPact?

There were a number of excellent speakers I learned a lot from and will be talking more about soon, including topics on copyright protection, patent and trademark issues and SEO, topics that impact both servers, server software, and online businesses. Our Business of Blogging panel with Matt Mullenweg, John Pozadzides, and I was a great success and sparked a lot of comments and good feedback.

What I learned most had to do with breaking out of my comfort zone. I’m used to conferences where everyone pretty much knows who I am, or will before the end of the first day as I’m typically the keynote or a featured speaker. Only a few knew who I was. I loved introducing myself and being asked who I was with. The first time, I thought they meant if I was with the person I came into the room with, but they meant what company was I with.

“Me,” wasn’t a good response among the corporate thinkers. I quickly restructured my introduction to explain that I was one of the speakers here as an expert in blogging and online community building. Many thought I worked for Automattic and WordPress, so I had to explain I didn’t. I work for me.

The issue of “Where are you based?” came up a lot. My favorite question on that topic was when they asked me where the offices of WordPress and Automattic were based. I told them “on the Internet” just like I was. One man insisted on knowing the geographic location of the WordPress offices. I told them that in today’s modern office, you could have a virtual office on the web and location didn’t matter. Some understood, others shook their heads I just smiled, having lived with a virtual office for many years. It’s the future, folks. Wake up. Geography is important, but becoming obsolete on the web.

These questions helped push my comfort zone around a lot, and inspired a ton of ideas for blog posts, which is why I enjoy stepping out of the safety and security of the known.

The two day conference was filled with great speakers, fabulous food, fun schwag, neat people, entertainment with a magician comedian, and an evening poker tournament. It was in this last event that I got another lesson in blogging.

I did not understand the card game they were playing. It was all for fun, but I was lost from minute one. I’d played various poker card games growing up, excelling at seven-card-no-peek, with my father on long camping and fishing trips, but this was complicated and involved specific verbal commands and hand movements and the taking of extra money from two players on each hand involving something called a blind, a politically incorrect term for someone sensitive to disability name calling. However, I was the first big winner of the night, bouncing two other players out of the game with my very first hand. I still don’t know how I won as none of it made sense.

And I kept winning. Don’t ask me how. I just kept laughing and laughing as the winnings piled up in front of me.

At one point, Barry Abrahamson of WordPress.com threatened to shut down my blog if I threatened his hand. Then Aaron Phillips of FastServer, host of several of my other blogs, threatened to ban my blog, too. I quickly learned that gambling can bring out the mean in many. So I threatened to bet my blogs against theirs and they quickly backed off.

I never quite got the hang of the game, having more fun talking to people as the players were switched around from table to table, and yet I kept winning, finally losing it all as the 12th of the final players. The final ten were award winners so I just missed out.

Several of my fellow players wanted to see the pictures I was taking of the whole conference and especially the poker game, but I told them that I didn’t have a blog upon which to share the pictures. One fellow challenged me to come up with a way to make it work on this blog. Challenged, I went hunting for a way to blog about the poker game and apply it to blogging.

I accepted the challenge.

Blogging is Like Playing in a Poker Game…

For me, the poker tournament was like blogging as we start out all excited, thrilled with the risk and adventure. We publish a few blog posts, fishing around for our blogging voice, and not much happens, but we learn as we play. Then comes the big win when we score, publishing something that proves interesting enough for some big traffic blogs to link to us and send their traffic our way. Our careful betting and gambling has paid off. Lessons learned, we win!

As we become more comfortable with the risks in betting, the excitement begins to wear off. Some call it boredom, others call it stagnation. It’s just the same old same old and blogging becomes work. The hands we are dealt aren’t winners but they aren’t losers, and we bet conservatively, waiting for that bit of excitement.

As I played conservatively with my mediocre hands in the tournament, three different times other players at the table turned up a pair of aces with confidence. Everyone at the table knew cheered them on, also sure they were the next winners - except those betting against them. On the last dealer card, they lost to different combinations of two pairs, a set of three, and a flush while everyone, including the losing player with the pair of aces, was stunned by the loss.

To break out of the boredom, we push the blogging envelop and write specifically for our readers, trying to manipulate a big traffic spike again and again. We study the most popular posts on our blog and on other blogs and try to repeat the success. When you bet your blog with posts designed to bring in traffic, you take a risk that often doesn’t pay off. Each of these three players bet everything on the aces and were out of the game when they lost.

When the three final players of the tournament went into their final rounds, these were the players whom I had watched play well, but play conservatively, taking risks when the win was assured and holding back when they weren’t sure, testing the waters as they went, accumulating small but substantial wins along the way. Bored with the game, I could have held out longer, like them, but bored, I didn’t take the risks that would have kept me going. In the end, just two places shy of a winning position, I stepped out of the game, hurt by my lack of interest in the game.

Finding the balance for the long run not the short haul is difficult. A blog is not a five post run. So many jump in thinking they have tons to say, they say it all in the first five posts, then wonder what there is to write about next, having expended all their energies with their first few bets. It’s the balance between generating content, interest, and enthusiasm over the long term with the occasional wins that keeps a blog going. And wins the pot in the end.

LTPact 2008

Having accepted and completed the challenge, I thought you might enjoy some photographs of the LTPact Conference in Las Vegas. The images include a few of the speakers, a private party in one of the sponsor suites, Russ Merlin magician and comedian at a luncheon, various attendees, and the poker tournament on the last night.

And I encourage you all to step out of your comfort zone from time to time to explore the unknown around you. You never know how it will pay off on your blog when you gamble just a little bit.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Life 101: Books That Changed My Life and Blog

Lorelle VanFossen — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 11:51:07 +0000

One of my long time favorite authors, Peter McWilliams, has most of his books online for free. These include:

Life 101, Do It!, and How to Survive the Loss of a Love changed my life. I keep them near me in my office, dog-eared and worn having traveled the world with me. If you want to be self-employed, a freelancer, or consultant, or be successful in general on your blog, get Wealth 101.

Life 101 especially had a profound impact on my attitude and behavior in life. In a section on Master Teachers In Disguise, McWilliams explains about how the things we fear are the things that motivate us through our lives. Instead of fearing mistakes, for example, use them as a tool to change your attitude about them to find the power within them.

Mistakes are valuable if, for no other reason, they show us what not to do. As Joseph Ray told us, “The Athenians, alarmed at the internal decay of their Republic, asked Demosthenes what to do. His reply: `Do not do what you are doing now.’ “

In Hollywood, mis-takes are common. (”That was wonderful, darlings. Now let’s get ready for take two.”) Give yourself as many re-takes as you need. Stars do it. (”I didn’t feel quite right with that one, Mr. deMille. Can we take it again?”) Why not you?

A Hollywood song (lyrics by Dorothy Fields) sums it up: “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.” Or, to quote an African proverb, “Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.”

Life is filled with loss, from the anxiety over losing your keys or breaking a precious family heirloom to ending a relationship or losing a family member, loss is a just a normal part of our life. Yet, we don’t know how to handle it. How to Survive the Loss of a Love is a book I’ve returned to over and over again through the years. I’ve given dozens and dozens of copies to friends and family and recommended it many times to help people go through it and get past it.

All of his books are inspirational, but more importantly, they are motivational, teaching you how to move through life tapping the power of your inner strength and faith.

What Do These Books Have to Do With Blogging?

A year ago, I was digging through Life 101 trying to find the words for a speech I was going to be giving on motivating bloggers to write with passion and commitment. As I quickly read through the fast-paced writing, I realized that McWilliams was writing blog-style. Short sentences and paragraphs that concisely convey their points without unnecessary fluff and babble. Brilliant!

I flipped to the front of the book and started rereading it again with a new perspective.

Here is the start of the first chapter in the book:

I call this book LIFE 101 because it contains all the things I wish I had learned about life in school but, for the most part, did not.

After twelve (or more) years of schooling, we know how to figure the square root of an isosceles triangle (invaluable in daily life), but we might not know how to forgive ourselves and others.

We know what direction migrating birds fly in autumn, but we’re not sure which way we want to go.

We have dissected a frog, but perhaps have never explored the dynamics of human relationships.

We know who wrote “To be or not to be, that is the question,” but we don’t know the answer.

We know what pi is, but we’re not sure who we are.

We may know how to diagram a sentence, but we may not know how to love ourselves.

That our educational system is not designed to teach us the “secrets of life” is no secret. In school, we learn how to do everything–except how to live.

If that’s not the start of a well-written blog post, I don’t know what is. Its visual, energetic, short and to the point, and makes powerful statements that compel a reader to keep reading, and to act upon what they are reading. It makes them think.

You want a great example of blog writing, read Life 101.

Blogging is about confidence, confidence in your subject matter and self-confidence that keeps you returning to your blog, persistently publishing and confronting comments and comment spammers. Blogging is about overcoming your fears. It’s about making mistakes and learning to live with it. It’s about the courage to say what needs to be said, no matter what anyone else says or thinks.

Life 101 and Do It! address the issues of what gets in our way and stops us from moving forward, especially when the path is a creative one that requires courage and faith in our abilities. It’s so easy to turn back when someone says something nasty in the comments or insults your expertise. Self-doubt plagues many bloggers, especially those who blog from the heart.

If we don’t do something because we’re afraid of the guilt, we are, in fact, being motivated by fear and guilt. If we do good because we fear what might happen to us if we don’t do good, the act of good is tainted with fear. As a transition–especially when breaking a habit–it’s a beginning, but we must move beyond that or we find ourselves in the trap of not feeling guilty because we’d feel guilty if we felt guilty.

So what can we use to motivate ourselves to do good? Do good because good is the right thing to do. Not right as “conforming to law and morality (or else),” but right as “in accordance with fact, reason, and truth.”

…The cure for guilt and resentment? Forgiveness. The preventative? Acceptance. The best reason to do good? Loving.

And if you forget any of this, the Master Teacher will be there, just before you veer off-course, asking gently, with that first twinge of guilt or resentment, “Would you rather be right or be happy?”

Your answer will always be respected.

If we used McWilliams’ example, our choices would be easier. Would you rather be right when you respond to a nasty commenter, or would you rather be happy? Responding to our readers from a place of love rather than guilt, fear, resentment, and anger is the moral high road not enough bloggers should take.

Blogging is About Persistence

Blogging is about persistence, and DO IT! Let’s Get Off Our Buts is a great book for working on procrastination and your personal obstacles that keep you from succeeding in whatever you do.

In the opening of the book, McWilliams says bluntly that the reason we need to read this book is depressing because it’s our fault we don’t succeed:

The reason we aren’t living our dreams is inside ourselves. We pretend it’s people, things, and situations outside ourselves that are to blame.

I love his opening paragraphs in the next section. Does this sound familiar with your blog?

This was going to be the best opening chapter you could possibly imagine, but so many things got in the way.

I was going to spend lots of time writing it, but, well, you know how time goes!
note: find quote

I was going to get lots of touching and poignant and humorous examples of people not getting things done, but I never got around to interviewing the people.

I was going to gather lots of wonderful quotes to illustrate my points, but I left the quote book at home, and this chapter is being written at a lecture hall outside Carmel, California. (Besides, I think the dog ate it.)

If this page goes to press without a quote, it will be most embarrassing.

I was going to make sure that this chapter was so informative, so readable, and so wonderful that if you were reading it in a bookstore, you’d buy the book, or, if you were reading it in a library, you’d check it out, or, if you were reading it at home, you’d decide, “Boy, I’m certainly going to enjoy reading this book!” but I decided to watch this movie on TV last night, and I was going to work on the chapter afterward, but then I went out for ice cream, and I was tired, and decided to start fresh in the morning, but then I slept late, and then I went out for breakfast and took a drive past an aquarium and decided to stop in, then I went for lunch, and then thought I’d take a nap and start fresh in the evening, but then I started watching a documentary on TV, then, of course, it was time for dinner, then I was invited to the movies, and I don’t want to be rude to my friends, and besides I sort-of wanted to see the movie anyway, then I was going to go right back and work on this chapter, but then I remembered how good the ice cream was the night before…

Which brings us to the most famous world that is our favorite excuse starter: BUT. It’s a start to the many excuses we can give, but also a stopper to living our life fully. In naming the book as he did, these are the “buts” McWilliams wants us to get off of.

If this sounds like your approach to your blog, you need to read this book.

Blogging is About Making Money

Blogging is also about making money. Wealth 101 followed in the tracks of the other Life 101 series, specifically addresses the challenges and phobias we have about what we are worth. Literally, how to put a price on our heads.

As a blogger, what are you worth? Are you worth only your blog posts, the content you write and publish on your blog? Or is it the worth of your experience and expertise that people would be willing to pay for?

Unfortunately, a problem many bloggers have is how to monetize their blogs. Not how to put ads on their blogs or how to have their blogs make money, but how to have their blogs help them make money.

As McWilliams explores the issues of wealth, he brings up the issue of finding the value in earning the wealth, using the example of learning:

In the end, it’s not what we have or do that matters it is what we take from what we have and do, what we internalize, what we make our own. The process of making something our own is called learning.

Like the boy eagerly shoveling through the horse manure “because here’s got to be a pony in here somewhere,” so, no matter how manure-like life can get, there’s got to be a lesson in there somewhere. “No matter what happens to me, I’m going to learn something useful from it,” is a fundamental attitude of wealth.

Here we’re not necessarily talking about the institutions of higher learning (which, alas, have become for more and more people a place to hide from what they need to know), but the learning we get in that greatest classroom of all life.

Part of the problem with earning wealth is realizing you are worth it, and deserving of wealth. Years ago, I worked with a business partner who had a very clear cut comfort zone when it came to income. The moment the business exceeded that line in the financial sand, the next month he did things to sabotage the business, lower income right back to that level. I was stunned at how unaware he was of his comfort zone even when I showed him the numbers. We all have our comfort zone, but really achieving wealth means pushing those barriers in our head that stop us from making more.

McWilliams explains it better:

Many people think wealth is having what you want. We have found, however, that a good many people already have what they want or at least what they said they wanted at some former time and still don’t feel wealthy. They want more, but they’re not sure what “more” is.

Yes, they have a shopping list which usually begins with “a million dollars” and continues with this and this and this and this and this and a little of that, please, if you’re not too tired. To quote one of the most absurd terms coined in the past century: “They want it all.”

As we said before and will say againthere is simply too much “all” and not enough time this time around. We can have anything we want, but we can’t have everything we want. (Even if it were practical, the concept of “having it all” is a strange one. As Maurice Sendak pointed out, “There must be more to life than having everything.”)

Knowing what we truly want not what other people think would be best for us, or what our family expects of us, or what our culture has programmed us forbut what we truly want, is a significant aspect of wealth.

He summarizes it with this powerful quote from Don Herold:

Unhappiness is in not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.

Does that sound familiar? I’ve read about a lot of bloggers who feel that way.

[NOTE: Wealth 101 is available on McWilliams site, but is currently under construction. You can directly access the pages via a directory, though the text is still needs a bit of clean up.]

Blogging is About Winning and Losing

I recommend How to Survive the Loss of a Love for bloggers dealing with the decision to stop blogging or to sell their blog.

The book deals simply with the concepts of loss and recovery, offering great tips and personal tools to help you go through the process.

I suggested this book to a fellow blogger struggling with changing their blog’s purpose and content. She felt so conflicted, she told me, torn between leaving something that meant so much to her, losing readers and the relationships created with that blog, and starting something new and exciting. She spent so much time focused on the past, she barely had energy to deal with the present and future.

While grieving is normal, you will eventually have to put a time limit on it.

Let Go of the Loss and Move On

At a certain point (and that point differs from loss to loss and from person to person), it’s time to leave the loss behind and move on.
Don’t be surprised if you actually miss the process of mourning. Some people mourn the loss of the mourning process.
Let go of the past. Look forward to the future.
You will, of course, occasionally look over your shoulder, but, for the most part, focus on the future and keep moving ahead.
Let yourself enjoy the excitement of uncertainty.
from Chapter 62: How to Survive the Loss of a Love by Peter McWilliams

After reading the book and following its advice, my friend called, her voice filled with new confidence. “You were so right. I was drowning in the loss of my old style of blogging that I couldn’t move forward into the new relationship I was forming with my new format. The blog is still my blog. I just had to go through the grieving process as part of the shift from the old to the new!”

You can read all the books by blogging experts all around the world, but sometimes the best books to help you blog are the ones unrelated to blogging. Blogging is about the expression of life, thoughts, and experiences, of creativity shared. If you are in your own way, how can you blog forward?

when we know that the cause of something is in ourselves, and that we (ourselves) are one of the few things in this universe that we have the right and the ability to change, we begin to get a sense of the choices we really do have, an inkling of the power we have, a feeling of being in charge–of our lives, of our future, of our dreams.
Peter McWilliams, Life 101: Everything We Wished We Had Learned About Life in School-But Didn’t

Here are more of Peter McWilliams’ books:

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

Liz Strauss: The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog Ebook

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:46:35 +0000

When Liz Strauss stood before WordCamp Dallas and said she had 60,317 comments on her blog, the audience was staggered. Even Matt Mullenweg was impressed. Everyone was impressed and wanted to know her secret.

Now you can get the secret behind online community building from Liz Strauss. After several years of research and writing, Liz just announced her new ebook, The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog — The Insider’s Guide to the Conversation That’s Changing How Business Works. Based upon the lessons she learned turning her own blog, Successful and Outstanding Bloggers, Liz reveals the keys to turning her blog into one of the most successful and social blogs on the web.

The 68-page ebook offers the things you need to know to move from offline-writing-think to online conversation with clear and concise language and tips. Divided into two main sections, “Can You Hear the Internet?” and “Can the Internet Hear You?”, Liz brings her wit and vast experience from years of work in the print and online publishing worlds to help you rethink how you blog and how you write on your blog to encourage the conversation, turning readers into community.

The opening paragraph of the book reminds us that the world is no longer just your neighborhood or office.

A conversation is going on. It’s happening on blogs, via podcasts, and in interactive videos. People are building trust and forging bonds with colleagues and friends. Online friends of (likemind) meet for coffee and conversation all over the world. These relationships cut across traditional rules and business hierarchies. The ease and authenticity of those relationships are radically changing the way business works – right now.

Are you listening? Do you see how business is changing?

I’ve written a lot about Liz Strauss and have been privlieged to be a part of her annual Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon), an incredible educational and sharing experience for bloggers to learn more about how blogging works, and how blogs can work for you. I’m also one of those honored with her weekly SOB Awards (Successful and Outstanding Blogger), an award that recognizes the phenomenal and creative work bloggers do. She guest blogs on many blogs and was a long time writer on the Blog Herald. As a friend and a fan, there are few people so giving and trustworthy as Liz, but more importantly, there are few business professionals in the world who understand what blogs really mean and how they are changing the world around us.

Packed within this ebook are a ton of well-written tips, inspirational ideas, and checklists to help you improve your blog writing, write to attract an interactive audience, how to build online relationships that convert into business and income. She also includes a wide range of community building tips that recognize the importance of trust, credibility, and transparency required for sincere blogging businesses.

The book concentrates on online writing techniques, emphasized in the second half of the book using a immediate actionable ideas in “6+1 Traits of Effective Writing.” The book also includes her “Classic Blog Review Checklist to Publish a Blog Magnet” and “Know the Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog” popular articles.

While I will be talking more about this incredible book for bloggers and businesses, and could rattle on for days about how it changed my blog writing and thinking, even after all these years of blogging, Liz sums up her book this way:

This book is about how blogs — video, audio, and text — start conversations, establish expertise, create communities, and turn visitors into customers, partners, and fiercely loyal fans.

That’s the kind of traffic conversion you want. Trust me, it’s worth it. I will be changing how I blog based upon this book. Go get The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog — The Insider’s Guide to the Conversation That’s Changing How Business Works now.

WordPress Community Exclusive: Automattic, on behalf of WordPress, sponsored the recent Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) in Chicago, and Liz is a popular speaker at many events, including WordCamps, so she is offering a special excerpt of her book for the WordPress Community as a way of saying thank you for their long time support and encouragement. Subscribe to the free Successful Blog Community Newsletter and you will receive an email to download the free ebook, “The Insider’s Guide to Conversation Online,” a 9-page booklet that includes more information on her new book and the compete chapter of “Writing Voice - The Sound of Your Brand.” This chapter includes a checklist to inspire readers and engage them in the business of your blog.

The Cyclical Nature of Blog Stats

Lorelle VanFossen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:57:12 +0000

In 2006, I completed a year long informal study on several of my blogs about the best times and days for me to publish content on my blogs and published what I learned in When is the Best Time and Day to Post on Your Blog? My conclusions were that Mondays and Tuesdays were the highest traffic days, thus the best days for publishing content with the hopes to be seen by regular readers, and that I needed to publish my posts prior to 0400 EST for my content to be there before my readers showed up.

With the improvements in the WordPress.com stats feature (available for self-hosted blogs with the WordPress.com Stats WordPress Plugin), I’ve been noticing another interesting trend that supports my original conclusions.

There is a clear cyclical nature to my blog traffic, which drops every weekend. In this example of my daily stats across a month, the low points on the chart are:

Saturday, May 17
Sunday, May 18
Saturday, May 24
Sunday, May 25
Saturday, May 31
Sunday, June 1
Saturday, June 7
Sunday, June 8

Monday and Tuesday are high traffic, with the numbers dropping towards the weekend, except for the occasional drift upwards for a day due to a popular post released midweek.

When I compare the numbers across six months, this cyclical nature is not as clear as it is close up, day by day. It’s there. In spite of the traffic spikes, the cyclical up and down of the weekends continues. There is consistent growth, but the weekend downturns keep the growth slow by averaging out the daily numbers. Looking at just the numbers doesn’t help. Seeing the visual chart does. And seeing it across weeks shows slips down in my blog stats, right?

Many stats watchers freak out when they concentrate on the day-to-day stats. Like watching the stock market too closely, decisions are made without looking at the big picture. I’ve heard panic from many bloggers who scream their stats have suddenly plunged. When you change the view from day-to-day to week-to-week, or even month-to-month, the picture changes. It’s now about the big picture of trends, not the daily fluctuation, some of them normal but noticed for the first time.

Since blog statistics were introduced at the end of 2005 on WordPress.com blogs, my blog has seen steady growth over the years. By focusing on the long term, I see the big picture of growth and stop worrying about the day-to-day fluctuation - unless I want to learn something from those statistics.

In this case, my conclusions from early in 2006 were supported. There is a weekend fluctuation in the numbers that I’ve been able to track for the past two years, in addition to the historical research I did in 2006. Mondays and Tuesdays continue to be my best days for traffic.

This applies to my blogs and would be different in different cultures and countries, as well as different blog subject matters. Have you looked at the different groups of stats available on your blog and found similar or different conclusions?

And if you are still daily checking in with your stats, stop it. Live a little. Spend more time writing quality content, not checking the numbers. The numbers over weeks and months will tell you more about how your blog is doing than the daily obsession checks. However, there is still something to be learned from the daily numbers, when compared to the overall whole health of your blog traffic.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

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