How to blog when you are disturbed

Recently, I have experienced immense mental trauma due to some personal anxieties. It is extremely difficult to concentrate and blog in such situations. If blogging is more than a hobby to you, you will certainly face the same situation, if you haven't faced it already.

Unfortunately, readers of a blog don't forgive the bloggers for inconsistency, whatever the reason might be. They will probably unsubscribe from your feed and will never come back. So, I decided to blog about the things that might help us blog through these tough times.

How to blog when depressed?

• Motivation from idols

  
  

This is something I did all this time. I have always found that the top bloggers that inspire me, have a tremendous posting frequency irrespective of the day. Have a look at the statistics on the left.

I am certain that these people go through bad phases as much as we do. But still they never give up blogging. I really admire the professionalism they bring to the table.

I asked my Bmom Liz about this. As usual, she helped me out. This is what she told me to do:

When I'm down I try get away from my computer, I go looking for things that we're made by people -- trees and sky and the lake and I look and I reflect until I don't have any words. I let the space fill me up until I can breathe again.

When I can breathe, then I think about what I will write

That's how I wrote this.

• Motivation from with in

You will only get to half the post and again crawl back into depression, if you aren't self motivated. You must force yourself to think why you started blogging in the first place. For me it is the traffic and readers' comments that keeps me going.

• Know what is at stake?

To cope up with the situation you will need to be a little strict with yourself, think about what you will lose if you dint write the post. Some of the things at stake are reputation, reader count, money count, blog credibility etc.

• How will it be good?

Show yourself the brighter side, the result, if you do make the post. This is another psychology which will give you a positive frame of mind, to make the post. Also, you will be able to put in a 100% since you will be thinking about the good which will come out.

• Watch a cartoon/anime

This is a personal tip which will be different for each one of us. Basically, you need to watch something that takes you to another world. I get a similar experience when I read Harry Potter in one sitting.

• Taste the money

Everybody is motivated by money. Some more some less. It works wonders for me. I go to a forum, people generally show off there earnings when they have had a good day. This invokes a competitive feel and shows you that it is possible for you to get there.

• Credibility is Blogging Money!!

If you don't care about any of the points above. This is the point you just cant ignore. The years or months of hard work that you have put in your blog can all go to waste in a single day.

The wealth you have earned is not Google Pagerank or Adsense Dollars, but it is the role you have assumed in the blogosphere. If you want credibility you have to work through the tough times, without losing readers.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

101 Ways to Create Original Blog Posts - Part 3

Read the 101 Ways to Create original blog posts:

Tips 1-10
Tips 11-20
Tips 31-40
Thanks to all of you for your valuable contributions and you can still contribute to this project after reading the rules.

101 Ways to create original blog posts Part 3:

Tips 21-30:

21. Talk about my kids. By Kim

22. Offer recipes for home beauty treatments or yummy eats. By Kim

23. Post photos, and the details of them. By Angela

24. Post scrap pages and the details and products used on them. By Angela

25. Hobbies -- for me this means gardening, reading, travel, photography, pets or cooking.
By Debbie

26. My tool - I keep a MS Word document that lists the days of the week for a month. I try to sketch in my blog post topics for the week so I have... By Debbie

27. I share my puny perspective on Hollyweird. I know you guys love reading about the blow-up dummies they use in crowd scenes!! By ZeeLV

28. I talk about whatever I've done over the weekend. This forces me to either have a pretty fun weekend, or have a really shitty one--so that I can tell you all about it. For instance... By ZeeLV

29. I share kid-related stories. It gives the reader a better feel for who my kids are and how I interact with them on a daily basis. By Gina

30. I share cute craft ideas to hopefully inspire other Moms (and Dads!) to be more hands-on with their little ones. By Gina

Become a Hot Member at MyBlogLog

The following guest post was submitted by Kuanyin. Read her blog at Blog-Blond.

Do you use MyBlogLog? It is an absolute must to establish relations in blogosphere. It gives huge traffic too. If you have been a member, its possible that you have gone through the "hot members" profiles and missed many others.

Kuanyin, is currently a hot member and she shares with us ways to reach the top and become a hot member. Here it goes:

• Be Audacious

Click on other bloggers as your contacts even if you don't know them. Some people view social networking in a fearful light. They see someone collecting contacts like a squirrel & stashing 'nuts' for a long winter.

However, I have a pragmatic approach: the more fishing poles you have in the water, the more fish you're likely to catch, i.e. the more visitors which will likely visit your blog and hopefully will become regular subscribers and readers. This is the reason I am audacious. I want blog readers! My Blog Log is a great fishing hole.

• Take advantage of your daily maximum 15 communities and 15 contacts on MyBlog Log.

I wish I had done this from the get-go, but I didn't grok at that time what a VALUABLE resource MyBlogLog is. I finally paid attention to the visitors coming from MyBlogLog and now make time daily for MyBlogLog browsing and networking. MBL management always cuts me off just as my appetite is aroused. Drats! Management needs to raise the maximum for hungry hunters/fishers like myself.

• Keep hot on the trail of other hot members at MyBlogLog

These hot members may be connected with someone you need to know. They may have been around the watering hole/block more than you, so you can learn something from them. Don't let yourself get caught up in comments and replies when you're fishing. Do that later.

• A catchy avatar on MyBlogLog is an important tool

My avatar happens to be me, and it seems to be working. Avatars whet my curiosity. Who are the REAL people behind the fake Paris Hilton or the giant breasts (you KNOW who I'm talking about!) avatars? You may want to know as I do.

Make your avatar appealing, even if you aren't particularly photogenic. This is your blog business card in a matter of speaking, so take time choosing one that will attract attention and invite others to check you out.

• Carve a niche for yourself among the most popular MyBlogLog categories

'Blogging tips' is a popular category, and there are lots of excellent blogs who offer blogging tips. Blog-Blond is a humor blog with blogging tips--a rare bird. I attempt to use my quirky and *weird* humor with my*Blog-Blond* persona in replies to others on MBL to spark curiosity and sell my humor blog concept.

How I made a Hot MBL community in a week

MBL is MyBlogLog.

It is probably the biggest community with regular activity which has the potential to bring thousands of daily visits to your blog. Once you create a community for your site it is all about getting it popular. My hits went up from 125 odd a day to as high as 422 for 5 days.

The best place for a community in MBL is the "Hot Communities" section. It features six communities and drives enormous traffic to them. I was able to make it to the esteemed list a week after I started my community. The answer to how I made to hot communities in a week can be answered in a few steps:

• Know MBL in and out

It is just like life, before starting anything you should know it in and out. You will learn things as you go along but it is important not to miss any opportunities. There is a huge collection of how to's on MBL, just google for "MyBlogLog" or "MBL" and read everything you find. I did it for 5 days. The best thing I learnt about MBL while reading is:
People on MBL need blogging tips, adult blogs, money making tips and colorful pictures(in that order).
So if your blog is one amongst the above you should definitely tap MBL for traffic.

• Keep Clicking
  

This might be unethical for some but this is what it takes. Go to the new member's area in MBL and open profiles in new tabs. You dont even need to look at them (if you dont want to), since you leave a trail in the Recent Visitors. The person will think that you did visit his homepage. Most of the time people do comeback to check your profile. This drives traffic to your page and possibly to your community. Also, click the "Who's reading What?" and "New Neighbors...". The more profiles you click, the more visits you get.

• Catchy Avatar

  
  

This is what I believe is very important. Recently, MBL decided to ban animated gifs so that is out of picture. I chose an avatar of the girl from "My Sassy Girl" and everybody seems to love her (I knew it). Following are some of the options:

• Beautiful girls pics
• Targeted avatars- eg. If you visit anime communities use an anime character
• Adult Pics - Personally, I hate this one but it seems to work for many. Be careful it will offend many people too.
• Child Photos- Cute baby pics or something that will count as "cute" to the ladies.

There are infinite avatars available online, just google it.

• Make Friends
  

Everywhere, friends help you out. I made a couple of friends who helped me out. They had been on MBL for long time and they helped me out. They even provided link to my community on there communities which gave a boost.

• Publicize your community

Post a link to the community on your own blog and make a catchy icon (see my right sidebar). Make it visible and people might join.

• Join My Community, Get a Link

Yes, you might even try this. Get people to join your community and get them a free linkback in return. Its upto you how long you want to run it. It is to give you the initial 50 members, so that people dont see a barren community when they go to your community page.

• Use the 15 Community and Friend joins

In MBL you can join max 15 communities and make 15 friends a day. I tried to utilise this to the fullest. Whenever you add a contact or join a community leave some interesting message which will bring them to there page and they will join. Dont leave a "I joint yours, please join mine" kind of a message. People dont read it and they wont come to your page.

This is almost everything I can tyhink about right now. If you have any queries, feel free to contact me. In the next article I will show you how to convert this page traffic to your blog traffic.

Article Submissions and SEO

Since, I have started blogging, I have been told the importance of writing articles time and time again. Recently, I had a conversation regarding the same on a SEO forum. Finally, I have decided to start writing articles which I hope you will read.
I will be checking the potential advantages which article writing has. If you have already tried it out you are welcome to share you experiences. Here are the "told" potential advantages of article writing, which I will try to confirm in next few days:

• Choice of anchor text in inbound links: The inbound links from the articles (through your resource box) are very important for SEO. The added advantage is that you can choose your own anchor text. PS: If you don't know these technical words, just read this: Article Marketing 101: The Perfect Author Resource Box
• Deep Links: After a certain amount of time some your older posts are lost without incoming links; nobody will read them. Articles help you to link to these deep pages and keep the site alive. This is again very important for you site to feature high in the search engines.
• Many incoming links: There are many people who use articles as building blocks for there blogs. If your article is good enough there is a pretty good chance that people will take it and write about it, giving links to you in the process.
• Give a boost to rank: It is very important that you give sufficient time to write each article and put in enough keywords in it, which are relevant to your blog. A well written article can get you on the front page of Google, with a boost in traffic and possible Page Rank.
• Huge Traffic: Perhaps this is the major attraction for me. At the moment, I am just not getting enough readers. Articles can bring people to your blog, if they find it useful they might subscribe to it.

Here are the top five article submission sites:

• Articlesfactory

• Ezinearticles

• Articlewheel

• Goarticles

• Featured-articles

I also found a list of more than 500 article submission sites, which I am going to use. You can download the text file here: 500 Article Submission sites for SEO

Do make it a point to try it out. Article writing might be the thing which can bring you the much wanted readers. IF you do give it a try feel free to ask any queries or share any experiences.

Keep Blogging!

Add a blogger sitemap to Google

I was always told to add a sitemap to Google for better indexing and possibly my blog would be more Search engine optimized. The problem with my blog is, it is on blogger, and I dont have access to my site folder. Hence, I was unable to upload a sitemap to google. But, recently I got to know a way.

Every blogger blog has already got a sitemap. The sitemap to your blogger blog is :

http://Yourblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Where, you should replace Youblog with your blog's name. For example, my sitemap location is:

http://bestblogbasket.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Finally, go to the Google Webmaster page and read the instructions to upload the sitemap. Done.

Keep Blogging!