Being Organized Will Help Your Blog Grow And Keep You Sane

If you are the type of person who is not very organized take my advice and start working on it. I was never very organized and never really cared to be while growing up, but it can really make a difference. Think of the time you waste looking for a password or a note you made for yourself and when the time comes you are not sure where you put it. Then after 10 or 15 minutes you find it. Now think if you do that a couple times a week, the time can really add up over time. Being organized allows you to use all that wasted time being productive. I have worked really hard to overcome that and let me tell you that it does make a difference in your productivity as well as lowering your stress.

My 1st Year Of Blogging

I have learned a bunch of things in my 1st year of blogging. Some things are good and some not so good, but that's life! The best thing for me at this point is that my passion for blogging and learning the ins and outs of the blogosphere has actually grown and I feel good about that! My most painful lesson so far was when I lost my other site Beltwayboysports.com because of a security issue. I'm still broken hearted about that and will probably never fully get over it, I know that may sound crazy to some people. I had over 200 posts and my page views were increasing each month until the crash of the site in September. I was going to have over 30,000 page views that month! I made my first post on that site last January. Your site security must be your #1 priority so that something like that won't happen to you! I have come along way from when I discovered what a blog was all about and fell in love and decided to do one! I had no computer knowledge whatsoever and taught myself to get to this point. I still have a lot that I need to learn in order to get to where I want to be. I try to learn at least one thing everyday. One thing I would like is for Google to simplify Adsense and make it easier for the new blogger to understand and use.

A Wordpress Plugin From Blogging Heaven

I found a Wordpress plugin that is absolutely amazing, it's the Header and Footer plugin that has been developed by Satollo.net. I added it to my self hosted Wordpress blog at Beltwayboysports.com and it has worked great with no problems. What it does is allow people like me who don't understand coding to add stuff to your template very easy. You just paste whatever it is into one of the boxes that are labeled and the plugin does the rest. You can ad adsense or anything like that to your site, it really helps newbies to be able to monetize their site or to add other functionalties for your readers. I wish that I would have found this months ago! The plugin is free and will cost you nothing more than a couple minutes of your time to install and have it up and running. I highly recommend it because I know how intimidating trying to add something to your template can be for a new blogger. I hope that this will help you on your blogging journey!  

5 Blogging Tips To Grow Your Audience

1. Post frequently when you first start your blog
2. Post comments on other blogs that you read
3. Respond to comments and emails that your readers send to you
4. Don't try to push crappy products to your readers for the sake of making a dollar, because they will not remain your readers for long. 
5. Join the social networking party with Twitter, Digg and all the others that are out there in the Blogosphere.

There are plenty of other tips for growing your readers and gaining traffic to your site, but the main thing is to get out here and join the party! Good luck and have some fun!

Blogging Alliances

I have just finished reading a very good post on Problogger.net about several bloggers getting together and forming an alliance. That is the online worlds version of a street gang, they are working together and promoting each others blogs and the group as a whole. I have been around the blogosphere for under a year, but I had already noticed how certain blogs appeared to work with each other. They do a good job of not being to obvious at what they are doing, but if you hang around then you will start to notice little things about how certain blogs seem almost clickish in how they talk and promote each other. There is nothing wrong with what they are doing, in fact it's good business and more bloggers need to get together and form their own alliances. If done correctly it would benefit the whole group and help each blog and blogger to grow and profit from it. I will come right out and say that I'm all ears if someone has any ideas on an alliance!