First of all I’d like to apologize for all the downtime the blog has been having lately, i know theres a problem and its not the fact that my blog is small for the blog or anything its an issue with the apache module of the server and my techs are constantly working on the problem as we speak. Other then that here are some stats you might wanna see, the image below shows my feed stats, the subscriber count was not effected as much as my hits rate on the feed, I guess thats what happens when your content is booming but your server just won’t cooperate..Other then that i’ve updated my blog to 2.5 RC1 which was just released and the admin interface is really impressive and some gallery functions that were added help alot too.

As compared to last month’s income this month has been slower due to some issues with time constraints but I’m picking up the monetization here where i left off in the next few days I’ll do the best in driving traffic here ( hopefully my server won’t screw up again)

And now i would like to give some link love to a few articles that caught my eye lately.

• John chow raised $7,500 for the union gospel mission
• Wordpress released 2.5 RC1 (still in beta i suppose) - I’ve updated my blog to 2.5 now.
• How to host a blog contest by blogging tips was really useful might help alot of new bloggers
• A great guide on how to compare different SE results by SEJ
• This post by SearchRank made my want to use mixx for a while.

Freelance writing tips are exactly that. Tips to help you stay focused and keep your eye on what is important to you as freelance writer. We all have periods in our day when we just don’t feel like writing and find ourselves surfing the Internet aimlessly with no real purpose. This is when you should focus on your writing skills the most.

You don’t have to write about the same topic you have already been writing on that day, take some time to write something you will enjoy doing. By allowing your mind to write whatever comes to it, you can actually open up other channels that can allow you to focus on the work that needs to be done.

Getting paid is important as a freelance writer as well as retaining clients by turning in your articles or other content on time, every time. If a client knows he or she can depend on you each time they assign you with a writing assignment, they will always turn to you first before searching for anyone else to complete it. Read more

I’m always looking for designing resources to make my wordpress themes better and stand out more then others out there and i have infact tried and incorporated a different view of a weblog in every one of my themes.

The only way to make the content stand out more is to have it on a plain white background with a detailed pattern as the page background, alot of weblogs have done this and most of the time the pattern goes un-noticed even though the readers don’t always realize why it is that they are drawn to the content more.

Here are 3 great resources for bg patterns.

ShutterStock Patterns

Rawsterne

Patternhead

Besides from ready made backgrounds here are 2 of my favourite sites, the generators.

Stripe Generator

Tartan Maker

All the resources posted above is not just for webdesigners but for bloggers as well the patterns here aren’t just for themes,templates and wallpapers but for ordinary pictures as well, such as banners for posts, titles within pictures to spice the post up.

Such as this banner

Happy valentines day everybody! (Happy bday to me)

Here are some eye candy wallpapers for all of you out there!!
I made these last night, these are really motivating for me at least.

The wallpapers were motivated by (once again) FreelanceSwitch, I had the wallpaper “Hired Guns - Skills to pay the bills” watching it everyday gave me a bit of kick and motivation to work harder , make more money.

So, here are my Make Money Online wallpapers, I’ll try to make more soon.

This reminds me, i have to work on my resources page, add all the cool stuff im giving away ;).

Make Money Online Wallpaper

Money In Style

Think & Make Money - 4 color variations

Money First - 3 color variations

How to be a rockstar freelancer is written by Cyan & Collis Ta’eed, they blog at Freelance switch which is a really great blog for freelancers and people who live for the pursuit for money!

I bought this book around a week ago and just finished it and i have to say this book really puts things in prospective for a webmaster specially me, specially its finance management part which is the part i was really impressed of, it effected me because i don’t really manage money that well or at all for that matter.

The book goes over the simplest and the most complicated parts of freelancing and making money online while keeping your life intact, most freelancers or new webmasters tend to over do it when they start out and it completely ruins their personal lives and health. This book goes over time management as well and explains how you should manage your time between work and play time.

How to be a rockkstar freelancer is a one step how-to book for anyone looking to make a career online. The reason i love this book is because they haven’t left anything out at all not even the little things such as how to manage your online career and real life job, when to quit your job and how to handle a full blown business when you have made it!

The things i learned from this book are:

• How to manage money
• Branding
• Distributing time between real life and online life
• Spending money and saving it
• Having a budget
• Handling clients (multiple clients at the same time)
• Caring more about health
• Diversifying my interests in a better way

The ebook was a really good way for them to get more subscribers too, when i went to Freelance Switch i instantly subscribed to their blog and actively started reading it.

I posted last week about ways to make money freelancing, and thought that I didn’t get quite enough information in that post to really help you make money so I am doing part 2 and continuing on. You may see a part 3 part 4 and so on in the weeks to come so be sure and subscribe to the feed so you never miss a single post about how to make money freelancing.

You can make money freelancing any service that you do for your own websites. If you know how to effectively place ads on Craigslist.org and get them to stay listed for a long period of time, people will pay you for it. If you are good at link-building with web directories, people will pay you to do that for your site. Just think of the possibilities of making money online when it comes to all the skills you actually possess.

If you are a writer struggling to get content to write, start thinking outside the box as far as what you can actually offer to webmasters in order to make money. You may find yourself writing descriptions of products or writing the descriptions webmasters will use when they submit their site to web directories. The possibilities of what your capabilities actually are could be endless depending on what skills you possess.

Make a list of all the things you can do for websites and list the benefits of what it will do for the website. If it is meant to gain traffic, then write that down. If it is meant to get the website ranked better with a search engine, write it down. This will help you when it comes time to advertise your services. Knowing what they can do for your clients when they ask will help you to know your service better and sound more professional. Being professional and offering a good service to people will keep them coming back to you when they need help. Webmasters will also tell their webmaster friends about your service and soon you will have more freelance work than you ever dreamed of.

Good luck with whatever service you choose to offer and if this post has inspired you to try some new way of making money, leave a comment letting us know about it. Leaving a comment also helps me to get the feedback I need to continue writing about how to make money freelancing.

Image by Cupcakes for clara

After learning how to use Twitter..
Twitter has many applications for the Business User (web based or otherwise) and the following are just some examples

Feedback

Does your website appeal to people, is it easy to use, does it get the message across effectively. Ask people, if you have a following on Twitter, you can ask people to appraise your site, generating traffic, and who knows, if they like it they may come back.

Networking

The platform is a perfect way to connect with a network of peers as well as potential users, sharing ideas and product news/business tips and tricks. It’s fast and effective and basically free.

An Intranet

If you work with others, separated by distance and connected by computer, Twitter provides a connectivity tool similar to a local intranet. It’s easy and free to use. This especially useful for webmasters as they are often dealing with a number of people who are only connected by the internet.

Branding

The most important aspect to modern marketing is the Brand; it is used excessively in internet based business to establish new sites/products in a niche to users. Whilst it is difficult to establish a brand, it is often even more difficult to communicate that brand effectively to a wide enough audience. Twitter allows a free medium for communicating the brand of your company to interested users. (see my article here for tips on Branding)

An Office Tool

Schedule meetings, arrange diaries and manage time with twitter. If you find yourself using Twitter on a regular basis then why not use it as an all in one tool for organizing yourself. It is possible to utilize the application to manage all aspects of your working day.

However you use Twitter, you will find that it is an effective application which can benefit many aspects of your business.

The Wide Wide World of Blogging, Roman Circus or Italian Renaissance?

Bloggers are at extremes highly competitive and secretive, and cooperative and sharing. Indeed the dichotomy between the different attitudes to blogging are becoming polarised in the two extremes. Are bloggers the equivalent of gladiators in the roman arena, or are they the intellectual equivalent of the great renaissance artists and philosophers who believed in sharing and developing ideas together?

It is true that the internet offers a media for instantaneously sharing and discussing all things under the sun, but at times we are jealous and petty about the trading of ideas, calls of plagiarism and I was here first, are becoming more prevalent in the blogging community. Whilst we all want to have an opinion on a subject the very real phenomena of plagiarism is on the increase, and many lazy bloggers are utilising it to build up content. There are those, however, and I count myself amongst them proudly, who believe that there is nothing new under the sun, and that all we can offer is our own unique perspective. I take ideas from other blogs, some ideas I generate spontaneously, only to discover at some point in the future that another had already written, almost identical, articles to mine. Plagiarism is being drowned in a vast sea of people who are getting online and blogging.

Can we ever be truly original? I don’t think so, or at least only in very specialist and advanced studies, say physics or pure mathematics, and the number of people being truly original in those fields are few and far between. What we are doing, by posting our thoughts, or tips and tricks is acting as an editor to the collective unconscious. We are refining, polishing and representing ideas and thoughts which exist in the minds of millions of others. I believe that the blog is the single most important cultural invention since the printing press for the dissemination of ideas and information. We are participating in the modern renaissance, and every effort should be made by all responsible members of our community to remain free from censor and hindrance.

Image by Nejron

Roll up, Roll Up, free stuff available, just read the blog, answer a simple question and you too could own a wonderwidget. If wonder widgets really existed you may well be incentivised to read further, or from the title you may be invested enough in the topic to read further. I am giving two things away with this blog, a nonexistent prize, and a nugget of potentially useful information. Depending on your level of investiture, for example if you dearly want to own a wonder widget, or are looking for ways to incentivise you blogs, you will probably finish the article.

Incentives are an important part of writing a successful blog, be your motives for profit or pleasure, and picking the right incentives is an important part of any serious blogger. People are motivated by an almost infinite number of different things but there are a few general areas which motivates us all. The following cover the main reasons someone will invest time in reading your blog.

Gain

People will read your blog if they feel that they will gain something, hopefully as you are reading this you will feel a sense of gaining an insight into how to incentives your blog (If not then I apologise for wasting your time, you may go.) Or you may be really interested in a nonexistent prize (really, I made wonder widgets up, ok.) Gain is the enrichment, in terms of material possession or knowledge.

Similarity of Interest

I agree with you, your views and your world philosophy, therefore I am emotionally invested in what you have to say. We are drawn, by the basic grouping instinct to people similar to ourselves, and on the internet, because the medium ignores physical similarities; we are drawn towards similarity of ideas and philosophies. If you are writing in a niche the chances are, with the amount of material published daily on the internet, that there is still strong competition for readership. One thing will draw people toward you, the strength and similarity of idea that you share with your readership. Putting this into a personal context, as I am a libertarian at heart, with strong pacifistic beliefs, I am very unlikely to read any seriously right wing views, whatever the topic context they are put in.

Perspective

The most successful blogs (in my opinion) are ones which allow a reader to gain, or maintain a perspective. The incentive of providing a sounding board upon which others can layer their perspectives is one which work well as a style.

This is of course a very general introduction to the psychology of incentives and their effect on readers of Blogs. Coming up soon a more in-depth look at competitions (material gains) and Intellectual Incentives.

The time has come to change your content, either there has been a fundamental shift (these happen all of the time on web and related topics) or you are experiencing little or no growth in traffic. As well as reappraising Mission Statement (see here) and content innovation (see here), you have decided on a bold new direction, and completing the Cost Benefits Analysis (see here), it is time for Change.

Change is a difficult area in all business, especially on the web, as a readership may not always react well to a shift in direction. All of the information on change management can be found here and it is worthwhile doing a lot of research on change. There is one tool, however, that I have found to be invaluable when contemplating any form of change, and that is the Do Nothing analysis.

In effect it is a simple mind tool which asks you to list all of the things you want to change, and then to consider the question what would happen if I did nothing? It is designed to weed out things that do not need to be changed (because the old adage remains true, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.)

Begin by defining the direction of change broadly, again to utilize WonderWidgetsAreTheBest.com the problem is as follows

“Traffic has not increased as planned with the hiring of two content writers” Therefore, the webmaster has decided to change the following things

• To Include comparative products to the WonderWidgets, namely the OrdinaryWidgets and SuperWidgets, on the site.
• To Fire one of the writers and to start writing content himself.

In ‘Do Nothing Analysis, both of these options are analyzed thus. If I do not widen my content will my readership increase (to answer this a value judgment needs to be made on why traffic has not increased, is it a content problem, or is it a design problem, or is it a marketing problem) Assuming that the value judgment has been made and it is decided that content, and specifically the lack of other Widget products reviewed, is the reason for the poor traffic, the answer to the ‘do nothing’ is that traffic will not increase, therefore this is a change that needs to be undertaken. The second change is to fire one of the writers, in looking at the problem from a do nothing perspective, the webmaster realizes, because of the metrics on the articles that both writers generate similar traffic, therefore it is likely to say that they are being viewed by the audience, and that their writing is not to blame for the poor growth of traffic. If the webmaster does nothing, he will still be free to market the site, and not have his time taken up writing content, so in this case it is wrong to change.

It is important to remember that Do Nothing Analysis is a subjective decision making tool, it emphasizes the alternatives to change, but care should be take in deciding the ‘value judgments’ that form a part of the analysis.