Occasionally, I receive emails from people asking me about blogging. Now that the second edition of my blogging book is out, the volume of emails has only increased.

A common theme I see is people creating a blog, posting as often and as much as they can, only to run out of steam. Lots of work for dismal results.

Common questions are:

• Is blogging dead?
• Is blogging still relevant?
• I published N articles and made no money. How come?

There are other questions, of course, but these are the most common ones. These are not dumb questions.

People have legitimate reasons to be frustrated with their blogging efforts. One such email included a very relatable quote:

I spent 4 hours writing a 2348 word essay. It was read by 78 people. Maybe fewer, as I too visited the page.

Can we really blame her for being frustrated?

The fundamental problem is that a lot of people treat their blog as the product. Your blog is not the product. Let me repeat it, louder, one more time for those in the back. YOUR BLOG IS NOT THE PRODUCT.

Yes, blogging is still alive. Yes, blogging is still relevant. But blogging has also changed drastically. Most of the conversations that blogging used to spark have largely moved to social media.

Blogging is still amazing… but it’s not the product. Blogging can still change your life… but it’s not the product. Blogging can make you money… but it’s not the product.

If blogging is not the product, then what is it? Blogging is an incredibly useful tool. Specifically, it’s a content marketing tool. It can help you reach the people you need to reach and expose them to your product.

So what is the product then? The product can be you and your career, your business, a book you wrote, or something else that has value and for which you charge money.

If you treat blogging as the product, you’d be very disappointed to reach only 78 people, and be hard-pressed to make any money from it. Even if a quarter of them were to click on, say, your ads, it might not be worth your 4-hour investment in time. And trust me, such a conversion rate is extremely unrealistic.

78 prospective employers when you are looking for a job is not so bad, though. Well worth the four hours of writing. 78 prospective clients for your freelance business, could lead to thousands of dollars down the line even if only one of them were to sign up. 78 prospective readers of your book, might lead to quite a few extra sales.

If you treat your blog as the product, you’ll often need 100K+ people a month to extract any serious value out of it. If you have a product, even a small group of people who are the right fit for your product can change your life.

Reading my book will teach you how to ensure that the numbers are larger AND you’re leveraging them to promote the right product.

The post Your Blog Is Not the Product appeared first on Technical Blogging.

This should come in handy if you’re launching a new blog or trying to improve an existing one. In it, I made sure to only include services and tools I trust and have used myself.

The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it should get anyone well on their way. Please feel free to let me know if I’ve accidentally overlooked any key categories of tools or services, and I’ll update the page.

In fact, I plan to keep the page up-to-date and regularly add/remove links as needed.

The post Check out the New Blogging Tools Page appeared first on Technical Blogging.

In this blog, I talk a lot about promoting your content, building a mailing list, social media, etc, because marketing can do wonders for your site/project/career.

Though I’ve advocated (here and elsewhere) for the importance of marketing for many years now, I’d like to make a point that is sometimes overlooked.

Marketing on its own won’t save you. Yes, it is crucial for your success, but unless your site/project provides real value to your users, all the tricks in the book won’t do you any good.

To put it into mathematical terms, marketing is necessary but not sufficient to achieve success.

In the specific case of blogging, you can generally bring value in several ways:

• Answering key questions your readers have.
• Saving your readers time by doing the research or legwork for them (e.g., cheat sheets, checklists, comparative reviews, even regular reviews).
• Introducing your readers to new concepts that can benefit them in terms of getting closer to reaching their goals.
• Amusing your readers with a humorous opinion piece. In general, it’s a good idea to entertain your readers once in awhile.
• Inspiring your readers, leading them to take some beneficial action they would normally not be compelled to take.
• Being thought-provoking, stimulating your readers’ imagination or leading them to consider thoughts they might have not otherwise contemplated on their own.

The key is to sit down and answer the question, “How will what I’m about to write bring value to my readers?”

I’m very interested in providing value with each post. So feel free to comment or reach out with specific questions you may have. I’d love to tailor some of my posts specifically to what you find valuable.

Image credit: The Blue Diamond Gallery

The post Marketing Won’t Save You appeared first on Technical Blogging.

As Woody Allen famously said, 80% of success is showing up. He is right, you know. I believe that’s the case when it comes to blogging as well. Showing up on the blogging front means posting new content on a regular basis.

However, after following a predictable trajectory, in the long run many – if not most – blogs end up being abandoned.

A blog usually starts with a bang. The author is hyper-motivated. They’ll publish a series of posts, share their blog with family and friends, get some good feedback, and then… Then life gets in the way, web traffic disappoints one’s lofty expectations, posting becomes less frequent and more sporadic, monetization efforts fail or fall very short of the mark, and so on until a blogger pretty much gives up on their site entirely.

But wait… they’ll be back here and there with an apology post for not having posted much lately, then they’ll publish a little more before, sooner or later, disappearing entirely.[2] Life, after all, keeps getting in the way, and it’s not like all of us can retire off of this blogging thing.

That’s the usual path to blog despair.

Several months ago I received the following email:

I just finished your book and loved it. I also read your blog from time-to-time. Why did you stop blogging?

The subject was “y u no blog”. Why I no blog, indeed. You see, if you follow the steps within my book you can avoid the predictable pattern of blogging abandonment that happens to most people.

Blogging is a river, not a lake. The constant stream of new content that you post on your blog is what gives it an edge over other forms of content publishing. It’s part of what hooks readers to follow you, rather than just consuming the existing content with no expectation regarding what is coming around the bend next.

Blogging’s nature is also a curse. That strength quickly becomes a weakness if you fail to produce new content.

Amusingly enough, I myself failed to follow my own advice. My pattern of abandonment was slightly different, however.

Thanks to my blogging expertise, I still managed to monetize my “semi-abandoned” blogs quite well. They continued to bring in a decent side, passive income. They still, relying on existing content, managed to keep a steady traffic of new visitors.

Lack of blogging success is not what lead me personally to stop blogging on a frequent basis. A lack of proper organization did. This was compounded by the fact that I run a multitude of blogs. So the degree of organization required to pull it off is much higher in my case.

Sure, I can sit here and blame the number of blogs I run. I can blame being particularly busy with my day job, I can blame the beautiful weather we have in the Okanagan, I can blame my recent renewed focus on my health. What about the government? Yeah, sure, let’s blame them as well.

The real reason is me. I failed to blog regularly not due to lack of time. We all have the same 24 hours in any given day. I failed to blog regularly because I prioritized other things instead. Including some things that weren’t actually worth my time.

In short, I didn’t have my shit together[3]. I often also fell prey to black and white thinking. “Yeah, I could write a random post now, but I want to get back into blogging when I can do so regularly”. And so over time, months, and then in some cases, years quickly passed me by.

The buck stops here.

After significant research into productivity, time management, and personal development I can finally say that I’m headed in the right direction. It’s a process of course, but I’m well into it and am now organized enough to pull off the multiple blogs regular posting trick.

I’ve already rebooted this blog (posts go live on Monday), and my programming blog (posts go live on Tuesday). Math Blog will also be rebooted this week.

I have another project under wrap, too, which specifically relates to said topics of goal setting, the systems needed to achieve them, personal development, and the general topic of attaining success. I will announce the specifics here when ready, so stay tuned.

Back to the topic at hand, here are seven key suggestions to avoid the abandonment phenomenon:

1. Set a frequency (publicly disclosed or not) of at least two posts per month.
2. Be predictable by always posting on the same day(s). Even better, have an editorial calendar.
3. Schedule in your calendar a time for writing posts. I find that two hours are generally sufficient for a good post. If you finish a post in less time, use the remaining time to write more.
4. Schedule your posts in your content management system (e.g., WordPress).
5. Keep a cache of a few posts to be used if an emergency that prevents you from writing that week arises.
6. Have an idea file accessible from anywhere (e.g., on your Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Docs) in which you keep adding future post ideas and headlines that come to mind.
7. Consume content that is relevant to your blog. Resources such as books, blogs, videos, courses, magazine, etc. This will stimulate your imagination and help you devise new ideas for topics that are worth sharing with your users.

In the near future, I’ll discuss some of these key ideas and provide step by step instructions where relevant.

The post Avoid the Abandoned Blog Phenomenon appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I like to classify blogging platforms into three different categories:

1. Hosted blogs. These are platforms that enable you to publish content online without any real configuration or installation work on your part. You typically register with the site, enter your information, perhaps choose a theme among the few that are available, and you’re ready to blog through their web-based content management system (CMS). Examples of this type of platform are Blogger, WordPress.com, Medium, and Tumblr.
2. Self-hosted blogging software. These are typically open source CMS that can be freely installed on a server or virtual instance that you run somewhere in the cloud. WordPress (.org) is by far the most popular choice.
3. Static generators. Squarely aimed at developers and other highly technical people, static generators are a type of software that enable you to write your articles (usually in Markdown syntax) and transform them into static HTML and CSS web pages that you can then upload to a server somewhere (much like the second category presented above). Jekyll and Hexo are two somewhat popular choices, among a sea of options available on developer repository sites like Github.

Hosted Blogs

If you don’t know what Apache and Nginx are (i.e., web servers), I suggest you simply stick to hosted blogs. They are the most convenient choice and even offer an element of discoverability, allowing your content to be more easily consumed by fellow users of the platform.

The downside is that they are somewhat limited in terms of customization abilities and the sorts of features that you can enable. They’re also hosted by third parties, so if the company you decided to go with runs into technical issues (or shuts down entirely), your site will end up being offline. They usually give you a warning, but trust me, switching to a different platform and importing all the content at the last-minute is not a fun experience.

The name that I trust the most in this space is WordPress (.com). I seriously doubt Automatic (the company behind it) will go down or discontinue their service if acquired. The only issue with their hosted solution is that you’ll have to pay to customize even minimal aspects of your site (like connecting your own domain name with your blog, something you must do if you are serious about blogging).

The two free alternatives that I like the most are Blogger (by Google) and Medium. Blogger is the better product, but Google has a worrisome history of discontinuing products. Medium is a startup, and that’s a risk unto itself. I suggest that you take a look at both and make up your own mind on the subject.

Generally speaking, if you are not technical, you’ll have to trust one of these companies.

Self-hosted Blogging Software

If you are fairly technical, this option is very flexible. You can install plugins and themes to your heart’s content, especially if you opt for WordPress (.org). And if your hosting company does end up going under, you can simply backup and move over to a different host.

The only real downside here is that you need to set up and update your own server. There are hosted/managed WordPress (.org) services that simplify your life by handling most of the maintenance and system administration tasks for you, however, generally speaking, they are not cheap. On the other end of the spectrum, there is shared hosting, which is significantly more budget friendly, while also being easier to set up. They’re limited though in terms of performance and reliability (which is important if your site becomes popular). [1]

Your average developer or technical person will find this second option quite appealing.

Static Generators

Static generators give you greater control because they’re usually small enough to easily hack and get them to do whatever works best for your workflow. Certainly easier than try to tackle a mammoth project like WordPress.

On top of full control and the closer to the metal feel, you get to enjoy great performance even with cheap hosting services. You are, after all, just serving static files.

I suggest you avoid this option unless you really know what you are doing and are proficient in languages such as Ruby, Python, or server-side JavaScript (for Node.js).

Feel free to share which option you chose for your blog and why. If you are still deciding, feel free to ask questions below, and I’ll try to provide some advice for your specific situation.

For the record, my blogs use WordPress (.org) and run on a self-hosted dedicated server.

The post Which Blogging Platform Should You Choose? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

These days, however, you might find yourself thinking that blogging is dead, or that it’s, at least, dying out. You can’t be blamed for that.

You see…

• The novelty of blogging has worn off for most folks quite a while ago now and as a result, mainstream media has typically been much more focused on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat instead of blogs themselves.
• Google pretty much killed the concept of RSS subscriptions (with an exception made for the most technical of audiences). There is the distinct impression that fewer people follow blogs. Many now pay attention to blog when a random article appears in their Facebook feed.[1]
• Some of the most successful blogs today follow the BuzzFeed approach. Posts that are lists of images, clickbait titles, and questionable ads (that are often, intentionally, hard to distinguish from the actual content on that site).

Don’t get me wrong, social media has its place. It is, in fact, something that, as a blogger, you need to do to succeed at – a topic that I plan to cover more in detail in future posts. BuzzFeed then, as moronic as it might appear to be, is creating content that people want. In a fast food way, granted, but still providing something people actively seek. So there is some value behind their billion dollars valuation (whether we agree with their methods or not).

I’ll give you my take. None of this really matters. Who cares if blogging is hot or not or if doing it makes still makes you sound cool or not. Blogging remains a valuable and viable approach to making extra income online or advancing your career, projects, ideas, goals, dreams. It’s still one of the most accessible ways to continually publish new content online at little to no (financial) cost to yourself.

Blogging has matured. It’s become a serious business tool, and it has a huge host of benefits, regardless of where you are in your career.

Some might see it as something boring and less exciting than its micro-publishing, social media cousin, and frankly I don’t mind that either. As a software developer, I can really appreciate the value of a mature stack or platform, even if people no longer consider it to be something new and sexy.

Successful businesses that are centered around blogs spring to life every day. If you haven’t started blogging yet, I sincerely hope that you give it an honest go. It’s certainly more work than impulse publishing 140 characters on Twitter, but the rewards, as is so often the case with hard work, are far greater as well.

And that won’t ever change.

The post Is Blogging Still Worth It? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I wouldn’t consider a blog that posts less than once a month to be an active blog. [1] Conversely, a blog that isn’t powered by multiple authors and/or isn’t a professional news outlet or the like, probably shouldn’t post more than a couple of times a day at most. [2]

So we have a wide range here. From once a month to two or three posts per day. Which one is right for you?

My suggestion is to base the answer on a couple of factors.

First, your ability to produce valuable content plays a huge role. It is always, without a doubt, better to post great content less frequently than to post useless stuff for the sake of posting often. Based on the time you can dedicate to blogging and your speed in researching and producing posts, being completely honest with yourself, how many great posts can you comfortably push out each week?

For most people the answers is one or two a week at most. If you have to, it really is better to compromise quantity over quality.

The second factor is consistency. Are you able to deliver your set number of articles per week on a regular basis? [3] If you only write two articles per week on your good weeks, it’s far better to set your publishing schedule to one post per week and leverage good weeks to stock up in advance on scheduled posts. This will also save you from constantly feeling like you need to write everything at the last-minute.

Try to be somewhat consistent in establishing a certain posting frequency expectation among your readers. You want your audience to feel like your posts are a regular part of their week/month that they can look forward to and enjoy on a regular basis.

In the case of this blog, I’ve set an informal pace of one post per week. On my programming blog, I now post twice a week.

If you are already blogging with a certain regularity, how many posts per month or week do you publish?

The post How Often Should You Blog? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Blogs are an excellent tool for promoting your startup or business. If you’re not careful however, it’s easy to end up putting in a lot of effort into something that yields little in the way of reward. The following is a series of common blogging pitfalls that entrepreneurs should be aware of and which you’ll want to address when it comes to your own blog.

Blogging mistake #1: Not prominently linking to your main site

It can be extremely irritating for visitors to arrive on your blog, and not have an easy way to reach your main site. Yes, the reader could remove blog. or /blog/ from their address bar, but you should work under the assumption that inertia is a strong force. If it takes more than a negligible effort, a large percentage of visitors won’t bother doing it.

One of the chief goals of your blog is to get people to check out your product. You need to make this process as easy as possible.

How to fix it

• Link to the homepage or landing page of your choice from within your navigation bar. Home should link to your main site’s homepage, not your blog’s index. Call that link within the navigation bar Blog instead.
• If your main site’s logo is present at the top of your blog template, have it link to the main site.
• If the main site’s logo is not included in the template, add such a logo or a fairly good sized icon derived from it within your sidebar, then link that to the main site.
• Finally, link generously to the product or service when you mention it, be it from a short description in your sidebar or from within your posts. You want a person to look at your blog for a second, blink, and immediately know where to click to check out your offer.

Blogging mistake #2: Not integrating with social properties

Typically you opt to have a social presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ because you assume that doing so will help you reach a wider audience. If your site and these social properties are entirely separate spheres unto themselves however, you won’t capture the true value that they can offer.

It’s a mistake not to link back to your main site from these sites. That’s obvious. What might not be so obvious, is that it’s also a mistake not to promote these social properties from within your blog. In fact, properties such as your Facebook fan page, can help show your visitors that you are more than just an anonymous, faceless company. If you do a good job on these social sites, you can demonstrate how you interact with your community of customers and fans, to prospective customers.

Linking to your social properties also acts as social proof. When someone sees a large number of fans or followers, it leads them to consider you as being more authoritative, established, or worth following as well. And since you are showcasing these properties to your blog visitors, this will in turn boost these numbers and increase further your social proof.

Finally, it’s a mistake not to promote your blog posts on social properties. For example, when someone likes your fan page on Facebook, they subscribe to your updates there. By posting a link to your articles within that page on Facebook, you automatically reach visitors who may have otherwise vanished for good after their first visit to your blog.

How to fix it

• Link to your main site from social media properties that allow you to do so.
• Add a Facebook Like widget, a Twitter follow button, and +1 button to your sidebar. Note that this Facebook widget should be used to get people to like your fan page (therefore subscribing to your updates) and not your site. Specify the former URL, rather than the latter, when configuring the widget. Show faces when it comes to Facebook, as they are very effective at helping you immediately connect and capture the interest of your readers (after all, you’re showing them faces of their friends who like you, a quasi-direct endorsement for you).
• Post a link to your new posts on all of your chosen target properties. TwitterFeed is one of many available tools that can take care of automatically posting your RSS to social sites (currently, both Twitter and Facebook are covered). But even doing it manually, if you so choose to, does not take much of your time.
• Include a widget such as AddThis or ShareThis within your template, so that your individual posts can be liked, shared on Twitter, and posted on a variety of other sites by your readers. If possible, favor quality over quantity and opt for buttons that include counters (again, for social proof).

Blogging mistake #3: Making it harder to subscribe to, and regularly follow, your blog

Blogs that don’t make it easy to subscribe to new content rarely achieve a great deal of success. These day, browsers like Firefox and Chrome even ignore auto-discovered syndication feeds, making the process of subscription much harder.

You might think that RSS doesn’t matter anymore. In truth it does matter — more than most people assume actually. Even conceding for a second that your prospective customers are not the right demographic for feeds, you still need to provide and promote ways for them to keep up with your new content. You simply cannot expect them to come back to your site periodically.

How to fix it

• Keep track of your subscription stats via FeedBurner.
• Have a large orange RSS icon linked to your feed URL (see mine as an example).
• Include a way to receive your new posts via email. You can use FeedBurner (enable it through Publicize -> Email Subscriptions) or much more ideally, set up your own mailing list with a service like Mailchimp (that’s what I use and I highly recommend it). Mailing lists are one of the biggest assets you can have as a business, virtually regardless of what you do. Set one up even if your crowd is technical. Include the signup widget near the top of your template, like I’ve done here in the sidebar. You can then setup an RSS-to-email campaign within Mailchimp to have your new posts automatically appear in your subscribers’ inboxes.
• At the bottom of your posts invite readers to subscribe either via RSS or by email. You can generally accomplish this by modifying a template file or using the option to do so (if provided) within your blog’s software. For this blog, I use a plugin for the Genesis framework (i.e., Simple Hooks).

Blogging mistake #4: Only blogging about product announcements

While you certainly should use your blog to talk about and promote your products, unless you have more than one blog, it would be a big mistake to focus your site just on announcements about your products. You’d be missing out on the true marketing power of your blog if you went this route.

How to fix it

• Write for the audience you want to attract. If you prospective SaaS customers are people who intend to lose weight, don’t spend 90% of your blog time discussing cool features you introduced in your app. Instead, write about topics that interest this particular demographic such as weight loss, fat burning, healthy foods, lean mass gain, etc. This way you’ll gather a community around that topic. Make it the blog that absolutely anyone who is losing weight should follow, whether they use your app or not. All the readers that you’ll attract will be exposed to your product either by sheer branding (ergo the importance of logos and links in the template mentioned previously) or by following your blog regularly, and then ending up reading your occasional bona fide product announcements.
• Even when announcing a feature or posting about a product promotion, try to focus on how this will benefit the reader. Tell a story. Don’t just write a dry announcement. For example, if you are talking about an Android version of your app for dieters, talk about how stressful it is to try and keep track of calories when dining on the go, and how this new addition to your product line up will facilitate the lives of those who use your product.
• Focusing on providing value for your readers, rather than just pushing a sale, will greatly help you increase your business. This will in fact make you come across as more trustworthy and genuine, as well as help you establish yourself as an expert in your field. If I trust you and consider you to be an expert, I’m willing to buy from you and your recommendations.
• Have a small blurb or banner ad for your products at the bottom of your posts, rather than each post just being an ad itself for your products.

Blogging mistake #5: Hiding what your product is about

I hate it when I’m five minutes into a post of a startup, and I have no idea what these guys actually do or what they’re trying to sell me. This is far more common than it should be.

How to fix it

• Have a small description at the top of your blog (typically in the sidebar) that explains who you are and what you do. (e.g., “Acme Fat Loss” is a web application that helps you lose weight by tracking calories and suggesting recipes that are within your daily calorie allotment”).
• If your post has anything to do with your product, quickly introduce what your product does within your post. Don’t just assume everyone knows. For example, “The investment we received means that we’ll be able to allocate far more resources to the development of our calorie tracker and healthy recipe generator application”.

These are not by any means the only mistakes businesses do when trying to succeed at blogging. They are however some of the major, and perhaps most common, ones. Thankfully simple, effective fixes, as shown, are far from hard to implement and can be such a massive boon to you and your company.

The post 5 Common Blogging Mistakes Made by Startups appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I just found out that my technical blogging book is no longer in beta. I’m happy to announce that it’s now shipping. You can get your copy here in digital format for $21, paper for $33, or both for a discounted combo price of $41.

Please consider spreading the love on Twitter,  Facebook, Google+, etc. And if you have a blog, I’d truly appreciate you reviewing my book and sharing your comments with your readers (assuming you liked it :)).

Thank you so much for all your support and encouragement throughout the production of this book.

The post My Technical Blogging Book Is Finally in Print appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I wrapped up writing a couple of weeks ago and the book is now headed into production phase, where any additional intervention on my part will be limited and the heavy lifting will be left to the fine folks at The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Over two hundred and fifty pages is a lot of writing on any subject, no matter how much you love it, and I’m currently enjoy a bit of rest from this recent large scale project. This small break from writing has given me the opportunity to think about what I’d like to do next.

Despite being a very passionate programmer, a few years ago I caught the internet marketing bug. I’m thankful I did, as it has brought me plenty of satisfaction and many economical rewards as a web entrepreneur.

This is to say that I’m the rare breed of programmer who doesn’t despise or belittle marketing. Quite the opposite actually; I love it.

As such I realized that I’m not quite done talking about blogging and internet marketing; I’ve only began to delve into it. Therefore I’m launching this new blog, aptly named after my book, for the following three reasons:

1. I want to share my knowledge about technical blogging with an as large audience as possible. While the book is admittedly selling extremely well even before it’s gone to print (it’s in beta as of December 2011), I’d like to reach an even larger group of people. Blogging is the best way I know of to achieve this goal.
2. I’m a fan of eating my own dog food. Within the book I outlined a great plan to transform virtually anyone into a successful blogger. I have done it before, but I intend to follow my own plan and advice to the letter with this blog and showcase how things turn out.
3. I’m a business man. There is plenty of money to be made by sharing your knowledge online through a blog. As I help other people do what I’m already doing with my technical blogs, I’ll also get to increase my influence and income through this blog as well.

The third point is self-serving, but there is nothing wrong with that. When you work hard at something, it’s totally fine for those who find value in what you do to end up rewarding you economically for all your diligent effort.

That’s the very spirit of entrepreneurship and much of what makes modern society a comfortable place to live.

Periodically I’ll detail the progress of this blog, in terms of statistics and perhaps earnings as well (as I touched on in the book regarding some of the other blogs I own).

For the time being, I encourage you to subscribe to this site via email or RSS feed, for free, insightful, no-fluff tips on how to become a successful blogger.

If you are not convinced, check out the about section where I outline my mission, what’s in store for you here, and who my target readers are.

Happy blogging!

The post A New Blog, a New Adventure appeared first on Technical Blogging.