Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for the ‘blogs’ Category

The Christmas Story Challenge

Okay, maybe I’m getting the Christmas Spirit and maybe I’ve just been inspired by the post I read the other day on Betty’s Big Bad Blog, but I’ve decided to have a little informal holiday-themed writing contest.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanza or the Feast of St. Lucifer, we all have our little rituals. Even if you celebrate the holiday by not celebrating, you pass the time somehow. This is a competition for those who go overboard with decorations and trees and centerpieces and a competition for those who spend the holiday with a microwave turkey dinner and a beer.

Here are the rules if you are interested:

1. The contest begins on December 9, 2008 and runs until 12:00 am Jan 1 2009. You must have an active blog as this competition is only open to writers with blogs. MySpace blogs are allowed but your blog must be accessible to the public. Any blog blocked from my view will be disqualified.

2. Write a short story, essay or memoir piece about celebrating the holiday season and post it on your blog with a link back to this post. The post shouldn’t be less than 250 words or more than 2000 words long.

3. Upon creating your post, comment on this post with the exact url of your entry. I will then visit your blog and read your entry (I will comment on as many entries as I can, but I can only promise that I will read them. I may not have the time to comment on everyone’s entry).

4. The entry will be judged on style, quality, creativity and how well your entry relates to the topic.

5. The winning entry will be featured in the next issue of my webzine, The 13th Warrior Review.

Good luck.

Are You a Blogger or Just Another Blockhead?

Dear Asterius,

Just to let you know I decided to stay on at my teaching job for a third year. Still teaching high school English and I’m still contributing to the school’s blog. I still hate it but, with the economy the way it is, I suppose I’m better off than many people. I was reading your recent post, “The Blog That Wouldn’t Die,” and I was thinking that I might start a blog of my own, outside of school. What I really want to know is, can you really make a living blogging and can you give me some advice about where I should start.

Thanks,

No longer a newbie English Teacher

Dear No longer a newbie,

Ahem . . . weren’t you the one who said you “hate blogging,” and that “it is a stupid waste of time”? Now, suddenly, you want to blog? Am I missing something here?

Okay, look . . . for the sake of argument, I’ll assume that you are sincere and maybe had an epiphany in the last six months. I’ll even take a little credit for being part of your conversion. Here’s the thing: if you want to blog just to make money, you are deluding yourself. To answer your question — yes, some bloggers do earn a living blogging. It’s actually pretty rare, but it happens. It’s more plausible to say that many bloggers can make some money blogging than to say that many bloggers earn a living blogging. The majority of bloggers do not make any money blogging, and no blogger that makes money blogging does so just because they want to make money. Bloggers that make money from their blogs do so from advertising revenues of one form or another. They attract these revenues by first attracting readers and advertisers with appealing and useful content. So here are some things you should consider before starting a blog:

Do you really, truly love to write?
If you see writing as a chore and you take no pleasure from putting the almighty word down, you will not be a very effective blogger. Blogging requires passion, sincerity and regular posting activity. Also, blogging requires that you log a lot of hours on the Internet, surfing, reading, researching. You have to be curious and disciplined. Are you, or are you just another blockhead looking to get rich quick without any effort?

What will be the focus of your blog?
Your blog has to be about something. What do you love? What are your interests? What do you know? Whatever your answers to those questions, that’s what your blog should probably focus on.

Once you’ve figured all that out, you need to decide which blogging platform you want to use and where you want to host it. Blogging platforms come in two flavors, hosted and self-hosted.

Some popular hosted platforms include Wordpress.com, Blogger, Typepad and LiveJournal These are free to use and are friendly to beginning bloggers. I’d recommend starting with one of these platforms until you gain more experience/confidence/readers.

However, if you want to go all-in, then you’ll want to get your own domain and website and host your own blog. Unless you’re planning to host your site on your own servers (probably not in your budget or within scope of your expertise) you’ll have to pay for website hosting and there are plenty of these to choose from (there are commercial webhosts that offer free webspace in small quantities, but these outfits have strict limits on bandwidth, content and don’t normally allow server- side access). You’ll then need to choose a stand-alone blog platform to install on your own website. Some of these include Wordpress (available at .org, not .com), Movable Type, b2evolution, Nucleus, and pMachine. In my opinion, Wordpress is the best of the stand-alone crowd — it’s what I use and I whole-heartedly recommend it. Other options include heavy-duty Content Management Systems like Joomla, Drupal, Geeklog or PhpNuke, however, while these can certainly be used for blogging, I think they are better suited for purposes other than pure blogging and aren’t as easy for the novice to learn as a platform like Wordpress.

So you’ve figured out what kind of blog you want and you’ve got your platform set-up. Now what? Well, now you have to write your posts and promote your blog. This is where all the web surfing and virtual handshaking comes in. The web searching is easy: looking for websites, news sites, and blogs that are discussing things you are interested in. Comment on posts, write posts that respond to other posts or promote your own ideas about the same topic. Some ideas include: lists, reviews, rants, news/information, how-to, useful resources found on the web, opinion. For example, let’s say you’re a foodie and your blog is about cooking and food culture, some topic ideas might be:

10 WAYS TO SPICE UP YOUR SEX LIFE WITH FOOD

RECIPIE FOR HONEY BLACKENED CATFISH

Okay, you get the idea.

As for promoting your blog, I urge you to join social networks: Facebook, MySpace, etc. List your blog in the blog directories (links to many of these are on my sidebar). Join social networks for bloggers like BlogCatalog, Pijoo, Technorati, StumbleUpon, etc. And let’s not forget Twitter, a popular microblogging site.

And if you are interested in making a little money on the side, there are plenty of places that will put a few bucks in your pocket if your blog meets their criteria, but the main thing is to write for the love of it and write as well as you can because that, ultimately, will draw readers to you and keep them coming back.

For Fans of R&B

If you like R&B and Hip-Hop, you might want to check out Singersroom.com, a website that XXL magazine calls, “one of the Internet’s top music sources.” This multi-media online magazine is dedicated to rhythm and blues, pop and hip-hop music and urban culture.

Singersroom features music, videos, interviews, news and editorials on fashion & lifestyle trends. In addition, the ezine offers support to both signed and unsigned music artists and songwriters.

Some of the content currently available on the website is an interview with songwriter Cri$tyle, new videos by Ne-Yo, Leonna Lewis and Robin Thicke and a lot of songs available for play. They also feature a blog called Hip Hop Noise.