Just Another Writer

Sitting around at home writing in your underwear is a pretty low-stress gig, but sometimes it can be too much of a good thing. Writing is a solitary pursuit, which can ironically leave you without the ideas that got you started writing in the first place. If you end up with severe brain drain, try one of these creative writing techniques to get your writing groove on.

1. Grab a trashy magazine and check out the headlines.

There are great ideas both on the cover and inside. I like to use this “creativity exercise” as an excuse to grab a Maxim and check out whats going on in men’s heads. It scares me. I digress. At any rate, headlines such as How They Did It: Five Women Lose 100 Pounds in Five Months can be morphed into How They Did It: Five Bloggers Get 1000 RSS Subscribers in Record Time . If you’re the serious sort, instead of grabbing a trashy magazine, use The Economist.

2. Play cards with yourself.

Get three different colored markers and 15 index cards. Divide the index cards into three piles of five. On the first pile of index cards, write subjects from your niche. If you have a money blog, it might look like this:

• Saving
• Investing
• Making $ Online
• Frugality
• Career Advice

Then, using a different colored marker, write down five formats on the next five cards. For example:

• List
• Photo Essay
• Long Informative
• Link List
• Review

Finally, with the last marker and set of index cards, list some random things that come to your mind. You may want to add some more index cards at this point.

• breeds of cats
• personality types
• musical instruments
• fish
• tools

Now mix up the cards. You may end up with something like a list of ways to be frugal with illustrations of a Persian and alley cat next to one another. If you don’t like what you get, mix it up again. Eventually you’ll come up with something. Just don’t do what I did and include “underwear” in your last set of cards!

By the way, if you like to play cards, consider winning the $50 in my Strip Poker Contest. It’s easy, but there is only a week left!

3. Lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling.

Eventually you will drift into a alpha state where you think of all sorts of odd ideas, some of which might even be good. Keep a notebook and pencil next to you, because, believe me, you are not going to remember this stuff when you wake up. In the morning, review what you have written. The ratio of nonsense to brilliance typically runs about 99:1, but that’s okay, because that one percent pays off. Good ways to induce insomnia include having a teenager, drinking coffee too late, contemplating the nature of consciousness and owning a cat who enjoys “making biscuits” on your head with its extremely sharp claws at two in the morning.

4. Copy other bloggers.

Look at the structure of articles you enjoy and duplicate it using your own content. This is how I got the idea for 11 Mistakes Your Blog Makes in Bed. Likewise, if you see some content out there that you can do better, go for it. You can put your own spin on anything. Ultimately, it is your voice and perspective that make your blog unique more than anything else.

5.Read books.

Make a habit of keeping some Post-it notes next to you whenever you are reading a book. Whenever you get to a passage that relates in some way to your blog, however vaguely, stick a Post-it on the page. You’ll find that a single well-written book can spawn a dozen posts. Don’t disregard fiction–you never know when you’ll run across a quote, story or character that will spark a completely unique post.

Subscribe. It’s fun to waste time on the Internet.

Money isn’t really the currency of the internet… Traffic is.

The success of your website depends on a lot of things. In a general way, it depends on the topic you choose, your writing style and content, your personality, your monetization strategy, and even the design of your site. But all in all, the measuring stick you should use to gauge the success of your online business is simple… it’s your traffic.

Getting traffic to your site is one of the most important things you can do as a web-prenuer. I believe that it’s easy to make money on the internet, so long as your traffic is high. You can have a sub-par design, or mediocre navigation, or you can even be a terrible writer. But if enough people are interested in what you’re doing, and you’re actively driving subscribers and new visitors to your site every day, than it’s inevitable for the money to follow… to varying degrees, of course. There are always ways to tighten the screws and increase your conversions, but for new bloggers, the early and immediate focus should be on producing valuable content and finding ways to distribute it as far as it will go.

To be honest, I didn’t take this lesson to heart until recently. In the beginning, everything carried equal weight to me… writing, designing, struggling to learn things that I didn’t know about, and balancing my day job all sort of went hand in hand. But the key that I’ve learned is this:

Without traffic, your website is just words on a page, no matter how good your content, your design, or your personality are.

If you want to avoid feeling like a monkey on a typewriter, then you’ve got to be actively working at building traffic. The web is filled with ideas on how you can do this… I’ll share a few now.

• Actively participate at other web sites- Comment on articles others have written. Contact your favorite blog authors and tell them you like what they do. Use forums and message boards to identify people who might be into your topic so you can invite them to visit.
• Carry a “blogger” business card- You can find a way to work your web site into just about any conversation… do that, then the minute someone asks you a question, you can present your card to them while you answer it.
• Submit your articles to popular sites- You might be tempted to hoard your articles for your own site, but sharing them with a site that has a much larger audience or readership than yours is actually a top-notch idea. Make sure you include mention that you wrote it and use a small, unobtrusive link back to your page.
• Make syndication easy so that new visitors will subscribe- A great way to get me to never come to your site again is to make me look around for an RSS icon. It’s the standard on the internet… text links to your feed might get me there, but I’m the type of person who needs an RSS icon to smack me in the face so I can subscribe and come back later.
• Link to other websites freely- They’ll probably return the favor. I’ve written about the way I name drop in a recent article on my site… for the most part, when you start sharing love with fellow bloggers, it makes them pay attention to you, and while you have their attention, they might visit your site themselves or link to you and encourage other people to visit.
  
• Post new articles frequently- If you produce new content frequently, visitors will have to stop by frequently to keep up with you. Careful, though… your readers don’t like to feel like they’re falling behind, so don’t over do it.

As a rule of thumb, I’ve recently started making traffic my first priority, ahead of producing content… making that adjustment isn’t easy at first, but when you create the habit of not doing anything until you do something to drive traffic first, then you’ll see gains, and it becomes much easier at that point. And once your traffic is up, it should be easy to maintain… unless you’re a monkey on a typewriter!

This article was written by Chris Bloczynski, from Chris Bloczynski dot Com. Chris writes about lifestyle and entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on principles such as attitude, removing distractions, mentorship, and tactics for marketing and growth.