I don’t believe you need to do that. I follow one main rule when I write, which is to keep it interesting and informative. I suppose that could be phrased as two rules, but you get the idea. I don’t stress about article length, paragraph length, bullet points, etc. I’d rather be concerned with presenting the information clearly, in a way I can enjoy writing it, and that will hopefully attract readers.

Let’s take a look at some of these rules.

Rule 1: Write short articles and/or blog posts.

The idea here is that people have short attention spans online, and so you need to be able to make your point quickly, or you lose them. I firmly disagree with this one.

Write your articles and posts as long as they need to be for the topic. If 200 words is enough, they’re enough. Don’t overdo it. If 2000 words is what it takes, write those 2000 words. You may be able to break up such a long article into shorter articles, but sometimes you’ll feel better leaving it as one big article. Just relax. I know some people swear by the benefits of longer articles, as this allows for the use of more related keywords.

I believe that your ability to keep people interested is far more important than whether or not you write a long article. If it’s information they want and it’s well written, people will read long posts, even online.

Rule 2: Use bullet points or lists.

Yes, this post is written as a sort of list, but it works well for this topic. It doesn’t always work that way.

I’ll admit to a fondness for lists because they allow me to give visual separation to subtopics within a post, which is supposed to make them more readable. That’s certainly a good thing. Just don’t drive yourself up the wall trying to find a way to make a post into a list or bullet points if it doesn’t work out that way.

Rule 3: Write short paragraphs.

This rule comes from the idea that shorter paragraphs are easier to read online. It’s probably true enough, but that doesn’t mean a short paragraph should be a firm rule.

Look instead at what is a logical length for the paragraph. Is it expressing your complete thought? You shouldn’t be chopping up a paragraph into two or three paragraphs just because you read that shorter paragraphs are better. You should be writing paragraphs that make sense as a whole.

Rule 4: Go for the controversy.

Some people are big on going for controversy as a way to bring traffic to their websites. It can work. Having an opinion online is a good thing. Just be sure you express it well.

You certainly don’t want to introduce a controversial topic and then not state your own opinion. Discussing and even sympathizing with both sides is good, but have an opinion of your own. You don’t have to agree with everyone. Just back up your opinion with facts or reasons why you believe it.

Having an opinion doesn’t mean you have to be offensive about it, although if that’s your persona, go for it and be ready for battle. Some people enjoy that, and others don’t. It’s not my style, but that just means I don’t go for the controversy very often.

Not every topic is really conducive to controversy. People get all heated up on various parenting topics, for example, and you can maybe even get some venom going on Mac vs. PC debate, but it’s going to be a bit more difficult if you’re writing about the best lawn mower for a small yard. If your topic doesn’t have a lot of controversy, you can look awfully silly trying to make some. Then again, if you thought your topic wasn’t controversial but it turns out to be, make the best of it.

Rule 5: Stick with what’s popular in your niche.

It’s kind of a funny thing. It’s often recommended that you pick a tight niche to cut down on the competition, but you’re also supposed to stick with what’s popular within your niche.

The problem with sticking with the popular topics is that you don’t stand out enough. Write about the popular stuff, absolutely, but make sure you delve into corners that others pay less attention to, especially the facets you prefer. Have content that stands out from what the rest are doing.

Remember that a big part of your success comes from your own interest in your niche. It shows when you’re truly interested in the information you’re sharing and it shows when you just put up something because you felt you had to.

Certainly the popular topics have a lot of benefits. They’re areas which can generate a lot of search engine traffic and blog comments. If you get into less popular topics or go into better detail than others do on the popular topics, you’re giving your readers something more to look forward to. That’s a very good thing, especially if you want people coming back to your site.

Related posts:

1. Can You Get Paid for Writing Online Content?
2. Making Rules that Work
3. Reading and Writing Together, Week 4

I’m not currently using Headway on this blog. Chalk it up to a lack of time or laziness, your pick. This blog will take more time to change over if I want it to continue to match the rest of the site. That said, I am using Headway theme on some of my other sites, and I really like it. I’ll make it work here eventually; all I need is some of that really scarce available time.

Flexibility

Headway is a very flexible theme. It comes pretty plain out of the box, but it doesn’t take long to improve on that, especially if you have your header graphic ready or will use a simple text header. The first thing Headway has you do when you go into the Visual Editor is the basic setup for your blog, such as placing the header, choosing initial colors (easily changed later), and deciding how many sidebars to have and where they will be placed.

You tell Headway where you want the sidebars used. If you don’t want a sidebar on pages, but you want them on posts, or you want different sidebars for those areas, you can arrange that. Widget compatible sidebars are available, and you can tell Headway when you want a sidebar to use the same widgets as another sidebar, making it easy to change them across the site.

The Visual Editor lets you see the changes as you go, and post them to your site when you’re ready. It’s much nicer than having to make a change in your site, then reload your blog to see the changes, hoping you haven’t made some simple mistake that completely ruins the layout until you find it.

Headway also has Leafs. These are a variety of ways to add content to your blog, once again, deciding where each goes. You can use a Leaf to add HTML or PHP to a page, add an image rotator and more.

Search Engine Optimization

WordPress sites in general are pretty search engine friendly, but Headway gives you more options. It has a panel to control various SEO options and every post allows you to write your own meta description or choose to noindex a page. There are checkboxes to have common areas marked “noindex.” It even cleans up your post slugs if you choose to have it do so.

Easy To Use

I found Headway confusing for a very short time, mostly due to the differences in how I’m used to editing themes, but I quickly got the hang of it. Most times you won’t be doing much at all with HTML or PHP, short of adding in analytics code or ad code. Mostly it will be drag and drop, choosing colors and considering your SEO options.

Is It Time to Buy Headway Theme?

If Headway is a theme you’ve been thinking about buying, now is absolutely the time to do so. They’re working on version 3.0, and when that is released, the pricing will go through a major change. You won’t be able to buy Headway with a one time payment anymore. They’re moving to a subscription model when they release the new version. Once that launch comes, current Headway owners will be grandfathered in, and still get their updates and support, but new owners will have to maintain a subscription. I don’t know what prices will be, but over time paying once makes far more sense.

Am I an affiliate? Of course. I use the product too.

Related posts:

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2. WordPress Archive Dropdown
3. How to Simplify Linking to Affiliate Products in WordPress

My opinion isn’t all that popular with some people. If you’re trying to earn money with your blog, you’re trying to run a business. Whether or not you’re making a profit has nothing to do with it. Brick and mortar businesses have to pay for a license no matter their profit, and they have larger expenses than most online businesses; there’s no reason to exempt online businesses that aren’t earning a profit.

That said, I think it would be more reasonable for cities to only require a license once you’re earning a certain amount per year. A business earning as little as Bess is earning off her blog could easily be called a hobby by the IRS.

It’s hard to earn money by running a blog. The people who earn big money off their blogs are the exception.

If you’re running ads on your blog, of course you’re trying to make it into a business. You’re trying to earn money after all. But just as most businesses fail in the first few years in the brick and mortar world, most blogs won’t earn significant money in their first years, quite likely ever.

Doesn’t mean you aren’t running a business, just that you aren’t succeeding at earning much money at it.

I don’t necessarily agree that a business license should be required when earnings are so low, but most places would call it one. I’d like to see some limitations on that, but it isn’t the case in every city. Some do limit when they tax businesses, but you may still need the license.

If you’re concerned about your personal blog being considered a business, don’t monetize it until you think it will make money. That means build your readership up first. Leave off the ads and other sources of income from a blog and no one will regard it as a business. Yet you can easily turn it into one when you believe your traffic justifies adding in ads.

Many communities have hefty fines for those who do not properly license their business. Home businesses of all sorts easily fall through the cracks, but strictly speaking home businesses in most areas are required to get a license. These rules are neither unreasonable nor new. It’s just that cities are noticing online businesses more.

Where Is Your Business Located?

Some people argue that their business isn’t really located at their home. They feel it’s more where their server is. They try to use that as a reason why they shouldn’t have to get a business license in their location.

I very much doubt that is the case. I also don’t think you would want it to be the case. You’d have to deal with licensing your business where your server is, which is not always possible to do online.

Your physical presence has much more to do with where your business is located.  You do the work of creating your blog where you are. Even if you blog a lot at the local coffee shop, you’ll want to call your home the location of your business.

When Is It a Hobby?

The IRS gives these criteria for considering whether you have a business or a hobby:

• Does the time and effort put into the activity indicate an intention to make a profit?
• Do you depend on income from the activity?
• If there are losses, are they due to circumstances beyond your control or did they occur in the start-up phase of the business?
• Have you changed methods of operation to improve profitability?
• Do you have the knowledge needed to carry on the activity as a successful business?
• Have you made a profit in similar activities in the past?
• Does the activity make a profit in some years?
• Do you expect to make a profit in the future from the appreciation of assets used in the activity?

My own, unprofessional assessment would call Bess’ blog a hobby, if only because there’s no way she depends on the income from it. If she’s expecting to make a better profit in some years, my assessment could be wrong. I’m not her and I’m not a tax professional, so I can only take my best guess.

If she can convince the right folks in Philadelphia that it’s a hobby by IRS criteria, Bess has a good chance of not having to pay the license fee. Only trouble is that the ads show the blog is trying to earn money. All too easy to say that makes it a business.

On the plus side of calling it a business is that you can deduct expenses, which you generally can’t do for a hobby. Just be sure that you’re doing it well enough that the IRS doesn’t check things over in a few years and decide that it’s a hobby because it has never been profitable.

Where Would I Draw the Line?

If it were up to me, I would love to see business licenses required once a business is bringing in a certain amount per month. That would encourage people to start a business. They could even say it’s before deductions or expenses so that businesses can’t just claim they don’t have any income. Beneath that level, let the city consider it a hobby that earns money.

If the business involves health or safety, other licensing right from the start makes sense.

Requiring a business license right from the start is discouraging to new businesses. It’s an expense, and if you want to have a business you’re going to have expenses, but anything that makes it easier for businesses to start will encourage people to try starting one.

But even if you do have to pay for a business license and hosting in the early days of your blog or other online business, remember you have it easy. Brick and mortar businesses have to deal with far higher expenses to get started, and yet people start them all the time. Much as we might like special treatment, there’s nothing special about any sort of online business that deserves different treatment from the brick and mortar variety.

If you don’t have a business license or home occupation permit for your online business, check with your city to see if you need one. Most places they’re pretty reasonable. Rules vary from place to place, so I can’t give you any more specific help than that to see if you need one.

If you’re in doubt, ask for help from a professional. SCORE is a good general resource for business, and you can contact your city hall if you have questions about licensing requirements. You should be able to check their website and figure out if you’re likely to need anything for your online business.

Related posts:

1. Do You Need a Business License to Run an Online Business From Home?
2. Moving My Home Business
3. Blog Your Hobby – Weekly Home Business Idea

But without great keywords, in the title and the article itself, who’s going to find any of your articles?

Which Way to Go?

Article titles can get a bit of debate going. Some like to write them first. Others write them last. Some focus more on keywords, others on making it interesting.

I like to have a title ready, but changing it isn’t unheard of. I don’t think I’m one of the great title writers around, although I come up with a few I enjoy. A good title helps to set the tone of an article for me. I may change midway because the dratted thing no longer fits, but I like having a working title.

The important thing is to craft your titles in the way that plays to your own strengths. If you write best with a general idea, and then pull a title from that, go for it. If you need that title to guide your article writing, work that way.

There’s nothing wrong with either way. The only wrong way is the one that inhibits your ability to write in the first place.

What About Search Engines?

It’s certainly true that search engines care more about keywords than about an interesting title. Keywords are a part of what will bring search engine rankings on the keywords you’re after.

Keywords shouldn’t be your entire title in all cases, however. You should do your best to use your keywords, not only in the title of your article, but in the title attribute in the meta tags, and used appropriately throughout the article.

Your title will often be used by people linking to the page on your site. This helps your article position when your article is linked to with your keywords. Not everyone will use your title or keywords, but you want it easy for them to use your keywords when linking by using a good title.

What About People?

When people click on links to visit your pages, a good title draws them in. Humans do like keywords, so long as they’re used naturally and are relevant. If the title is clever or funny or otherwise interesting to a human reader, that helps to draw their attention.

A plain title can work, especially when people are looking for something specific. There’s rarely a need to get silly about that Canon PowerShot SD780IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera review page title. Relevance matters quite a bit when people are searching for something specific.

In the above example, you can still make the title interesting. It could imply problems with the camera. It could rave about the camera. When you’re being that specific however, the keywords in the title need that relevance to buyers, not people casually looking for information.

People looking more for information, on the other hand, will probably enjoy a title that stands out and promises a good read. A dry, keyword filled title shows that the article is probably about what they’re looking for, but doesn’t promise to be written in an interesting manner. Keywords used in an interesting way can be a big help in getting readers to your informational articles.

Related posts:

1. Great article on at home call center employees
2. Does Article Distribution Through Content Crooner Work?
3. Is It Better To Have Your Article Published on a Website or in a Newsletter?

If you want what details are available, try the discussion on WebHostingTalk, this story on CNet, and this one on Read Write Web.

What’s the Lesson?

The big lesson here is to always, always have backups of your site. Shut downs can happen for much less reason than law enforcement ordering them down. Free hosts can take your site down just because, if that’s what they want to do.

Sites get taken down from Blogger for spamming, DMCA violations and sometimes for reasons that are hard to understand. Sites get shut down on WordPress.com because the owner was caught using affiliate links, even when they almost never did it. These are things that can happen to you on any free host at any time.

But even with paid hosting you should be taking regular backups of your data. After all, the owners of Blogtery were paying for their hosting, then suddenly lost it, and they’re saying they don’t have it all backed up.

There’s a simple WordPress plugin that will do it for you on whatever schedule you set. You don’t have to do a thing, just tell it where to email the backup.

When your site disappears, for whatever the reason, and you don’t have backups, your work is gone. You can try to use Google’s cache to retrieve some of it, or Archive.org, but you can’t be certain of getting it all back.

Your backups are your one defense from complete disaster if something happens with your hosting.

Don’t Just Backup Your Site

So long as we’re on the subject, don’t just backup your site. Backup your computer, more than one way.

I keep an external hard drive on my desk that backs up my computer regularly. But in case of a natural disaster that really isn’t enough.

Look into offsite backup options. There are a lot out there. Find one that fits your budget. Some, such as SafeCopy Backup offer a limited amount of space for free. You can also use Amazon’s S3 service to backup your computer. MozyPro is another alternative for businesses.

Another option is to store a backup at a trusted friend or relative’s home, and update it periodically. This isn’t easy, but it’s a good option if you don’t want to trust an online company with your data.

However you do it, protect all of your data, both the online parts of your business and the data you keep at home. Minimizing the chances for trouble always makes sense.

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3. Attend Free Community Events – Free Fun Fridays

Now how much time are you spending on creating your own?

It’s amazingly easy to fall into the trap of reading, reading, reading, and not working enough on your own websites. After all, you’re trying to keep up with your niche, right?

This is something I got to thinking about after reading Lynn Terry’s Finding Balance Between Consuming Content …and Creating Content article recently.  David Risley also has a good post, Why Bloggers Shouldn’t Read Other Blogs.

I’m generally satisfied with the way I manage my balance, which is by doing most my consuming of content when I know or suspect the kids won’t give me enough quiet time to really get into creating content. Kids are a great distraction, but so much fun!

It’s something you really should think about for yourself. Do you have a good balance too, or is it content diet time?

The simple truth is that both matter. You need to keep up with your niche and you need to keep working on your own sites. When do you do each?

Consuming Content

The best time to consume content is when you aren’t likely to be as productive in creating content. This can be when you’re distracted. When you are short of ideas. At the times of day that you know from experience you just don’t create as well as you would like.

The challenge is keeping these from flowing into the times when you should be creating. Sometimes you want to read one more blog post, follow one more link, visit just one more forum, read a few more Tweets aaaand then your time to work is gone!

If you’re finding that you tend to overdo the consumption of content, it’s time for a diet. Cold turkey isn’t too bad a way to go in most niches.

Take a week off, or even a month. Unless your niche is very fast moving, you can afford to take a break. Use the time to focus on your own content.

This includes shutting down whatever Twitter application you may prefer, and closing that window into Facebook. They’re both wonderful for networking and for promoting your own content in their own ways, but a break can be a very good thing.

Don’t worry about getting behind on your feed reader. I hit the “Mark all as read” button on my Google Reader quite often. It works great for not feeling as though I’m running behind on reading. It means I’ve made the conscious decision to not read the unread stuff.

Pick Times to Create Content

What are your most productive times for writing? Early morning? When the kids are at school? In the evenings when they’re in bed?

These are the times you need to focus as exclusively as possible on content creation. Shut off the distractions and get to work.

Now Lynn suggested in her article linked above that you try a Time Log. Track the time you spend on everything, not just the internet. This is a great idea, especially if you’re having trouble finding time to write at all. You might just discover where you’re wasting time you could put to better use.

Remember that your success isn’t going to come from reading what other people are doing. It’s going to come from what you are doing. It’s time to stop being passive, reading other people’s content and get active creating your own content. Just think of it as diet and exercise for your blog.

Related posts:

1. Are You Creating Content or Clutter?
2. Beating the Content Blues
3. Presell with Your Content

A favorite way of mine to get ideas is to read what others have written. But there’s something you have to be careful of. You do not want to plagiarize anyone. But there are a few simple ways you can avoid this problem.

Discuss Their Article and Link to Them

If you really like what someone else has written, there’s nothing stopping you in most cases from linking to the article, crediting a few key points and adding in your own thoughts. It’s a great way to share quality information.

You may get some attention from the original author when they note the link to their site. This makes for not only great inspirations, but a pretty good networking tool. It can also be good for search engines to note that you link out, sharing good information, rather than hiding away on your own site. I read that some time ago on Daily Blog Tips, and I agree with how they explain it.

Disagree with Their Article

Disagreeing with what someone else wrote can be fun. If you’re going to link to their article and explain why you disagree, you might just get some conversation going. Or a bit of anger, whatever. It depends on how you write your own article and on the personality of the person you’re disagreeing with.

You’ll note however, that I said if. Linking isn’t something I always do.

There’s good reason for that. Sometimes what I’m disagreeing with is when I feel someone is promoting a scam or something mighty close to one. If I feel the article is promoting something I don’t care to link to, I won’t.

In that case, my own article is likely more general. It doesn’t need to go from point to point countering everything.

It may also not even appear to be disagreeing with anything in particular. When I’ve read something I’ve disagreed with, sometimes the resultant article is strictly about my point of view.

Sadly, some people will write anything for a chance to earn money. While you may not agree with what they’re saying, you can take it as inspiration to discuss your perspective.

An example of this would be the scads of  “Google Money” and similar splogs that were all over the place in 2009. I disagreed plenty with them, but I wasn’t about to link to any. Much better to link to the resources that explained why they should be avoided.

Read Only the Titles

You can get a lot of ideas just from the titles of other articles. Read the title and create one of your own.

When I do this, sometimes it won’t even be on the same topic as the title I read. The other title just gets me thinking on a topic of my own. It might be the type of the title, it might be just one word that makes me sit up and say “hey, that’s an idea!”

Read the Articles and Note Individual Ideas

This is one you have to be very careful with, as it can reach into plagiarism if you aren’t careful. It can pay to take just one or two concepts from an article and note them for a future article.

Generally speaking, if I get an idea from someone else’s article I’m either going to write it up immediately with crediting links, or I’m going to take just one concept and develop things in my own direction in a few days.

I don’t like to write the second kind of article there immediately. My mind is likely too full of ideas from the other author’s article, and I don’t want to accidentally imitate them. Giving it a couple days and reading other things gives me time to develop it into something unique.

If you really want to make the idea your own, take things a step farther and don’t use it directly. Instead, brainstorm on related ideas. You can write it out on paper, type them into your word processor, use Google’s Wonder Wheel or even use a keyword tool to see what comes out.

Read Forums

Reading on forums is a great way to find out what questions people are asking about your niche. If someone is asking the question on a forum, you have a good chance that someone else is asking it on the search engines.

You’ll notice that a lot of these ideas I use are for generating ideas to write about another day. Many times when I can’t think of a topic to write about, even with a topic I’ll struggle more than usual with the writing. Taking a day to generate ideas rather than articles means that the days I’m more into writing are more productive because the ideas are all there.

You can do many of these tips with articles you’ve previously written for your own site too. You can disagree with something you previously wrote because you’ve learned something new. You can go into more detail on topics you’ve written before. You can take a new angle on an old topic.

Just do your best to keep from rehashing the same information over and over again on your site.

Related posts:

1. Do You Need to Go on a Content Diet?
2. Beating the Content Blues
3. Are You Following All the Rules When Writing Content for Your Websites?

The only trouble is… not everything really does all that well.

That part should be obvious. I mean, we can’t expect every little thing any of us writes to be brilliant. It would be nice but for most of us it just doesn’t happen.

Some people are fans of writing something for their sites every day. That’s nice, but the problem is that it can encourage you to create clutter, rather than meaningful content.

Take a few minutes to think about what you’re writing. Is it good quality? Do you think the search engines will like it? How about your regular readers? And the people who find it through the search engines?

Writing just to get something written may mean that your site is constantly updated, but that’s not the end all, be all of website or blog ownership. Make sure that what you’re writing is meeting your goals too. Otherwise it’s just clutter.

You do know your goals, right?

Not everyone has the same goals for their sites. My main goal is to keep earning enough money that I can work at home, rather than having to work outside the home. Beyond that, I’d like to earn enough to let my husband work at home.

No mention of content there, you notice that?

That’s because creating good content is a part of those goals. If I’m not finding ways to bring people into my sites, I can’t make money. The quality of my content is what gives me a chance to earn from my sites.

Oh, and I also want to enjoy what I’m doing.

For others, blogging or owning a website is all about sharing their thoughts. Earning money is secondary. For still others, it’s money, money, money and they’ll promote anything and everything if there’s a chance it will earn something for them. And of course many are like me, wanting to earn a living by being helpful and providing useful information.

But There’s a Catch…

There’s one big catch to creating quality content. If you aren’t getting any traffic, it may as well be clutter. No one is reading it. No one is being helped by it. It’s not even helping you.

Well, unless you’re writing for the love of it or just for practice. But if you want to earn money, getting readers matters. A lot.

I’ll readily admit that I don’t enjoy marketing nearly as much as writing. I’d probably have a much more popular site if I were better about my marketing efforts. I’m working on it, and I figure I’ll get there eventually.

There are a lot of ways to market your site and even individual pages, and many really are in essence other kinds of content creation.

Social media sites, for example. Posting on Twitter and Facebook are certainly in part content creation even as they market your site.

Article marketing is also a form of content creation. You’re just doing it for other sites in the hopes of building links back to your own site, and maybe even some traffic. The same goes for guest posting on someone else’s blog.

Each of these types of marketing has advantages and disadvantages. Social media marketing is more social, and takes time. Too much time if you aren’t careful about how much you let yourself get into them. But it is often easier to get Twitter followers than it is to get email signups, and you can automate the posting of your blog posts to Twitter if you like. Be sure to think about how much personal interaction you want to give.

Article marketing takes the time you could be spending on creating content for your own site. You need to know that you’re doing it in a way that will build up your site. They shouldn’t all just link back to your home page, for example. You need to think about what the action is you would like for readers of your distributed articles to take.

These tools can be great for taking the clutter potential away from your site. Write something great? Tweet it! Share it on Facebook! Link to it in your article marketing efforts. Do what you can to make sure it gets out there. It may not work every time, but you have to keep trying.

Related posts:

1. Beating the Content Blues
2. 7 Ways to Build Backlinks to Your Content
3. Can You Get Paid for Writing Online Content?

I can’t say I blame them. Much of the article is condescending. Little mommy bloggers making money. How cute.

A part of the problem is that it appears in the Fashion and Style section. Considering the effect mom bloggers are having on marketing, the business section strikes me as far more appropriate.

The comparison to a Tupperware party or a kaffeeklatsch is no doubt intended to be cute, but many mom bloggers find it to be more condescending. They clearly don’t like that mom bloggers are including earning money in what for some reason ought to be a purely social hobby.

It’s a common problem for moms. Work outside the home, you’re neglecting your children. Stay at home, you’re lazy. Find a way to do both, well you’re just terrible! Negligent, lazy, and how dare you make a living doing something you enjoy.

Moms blogging goes beyond parenting and gossip. Sure there’s talk about diapers, parenting skills and rough days. But there’s also work on our favorite causes. With our highly personal voices, there’s great connection with readers, and marketers love that.

Are there legitimate concerns about honesty when some bloggers review products? Absolutely. But that goes for all kinds of blogs. It’s just that you hear about it when they talk about mom blogs. It’s why disclosure is so important.

We’re very fortunate that it is so possible for moms to have such a voice online these days. I’d just like to see it taken more seriously by others in the media.

So far that’s not happening. You just have to take a look at the articles the New York Times has posted about mom bloggers  to see what I mean. Kelby Carr has a great list in her post, Newspaper Bias Against Mom Bloggers, and it’s not just a problem with the New York Times.

There’s a lot of great reading available out there about this article. Here are a few I’ve found. Share your favorites in the comments if you like.

New York Times Biased Against Mommy Bloggers?

Honey, Don’t Bother Me. I’m Too Busy Writing With a Toddler In My Lap

Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Writing a Mildly Annoyed Letter to the New York Times.

Why did you start blogging? My views on the New York Times article

and of course Kelby Carr’s article linked above in my post.

Related posts:

1. Apparently Mom Bloggers Are Interested in Only One Thing
2. Finding Guest Bloggers or Guest Blogging Opportunities
3. Why Are Mom Blogs Getting So Much Attention from the FTC?

I don’t mean rewriting the same article over and over again. It’s already hard enough to avoid that trap when you’ve been working on a topic for a while. You can easily forget some of what you’ve written in the past and write something new that is very similar.

But writing content isn’t the only game in town. You can repurpose content you’ve already created for use in marketing your site.

Podcasting/Audio

Some people love to learn by listening. It’s how they learn the best. You’ll need a microphone for your computer and some software such as Audacity to create it. There are many sites you can use to distribute your podcast. You can even share it on iTunes.

The tricky part is coming up with information that’s long enough to be interesting. That’s a rather different length from most articles written for websites. You may have to combine a couple to come up with a good length.

Video

Sites such as YouTube are incredibly popular. They get millions of visitors looking for videos on all kinds of subjects. This is great since some people are very visual learners.

If you have Windows, you probably have Movie Maker already installed. Macs also have tools to help you make videos, and are generally better at dealing with high definition.

You will need either a good webcam or a small digital camcorder if you want to be in your videos. The Flip video camera is very popular.

You can in essence read your articles to make your videos. I suggest having visual aids when possible. If you’d rather not star in the video, you can make them be a sort of slide presentation, or do a product demonstration without showing your face. You have plenty of options.

Brainstorming New Content

If you’re struggling with new content ideas, repurposing what you already have is only going to take you so far. Eventually you’re going to have to come up with something new.

Brainstorming can be a big help. There are many ways to do this, and hopefully you’ve learned one in the past.

An easy way to go is to write down one idea. Then start expanding on it. This can generate several individual articles or even an article series. Just see where it takes you.

Reading other people’s content can also help. I don’t suggest copying, but see what it makes you think up. I recommend sitting on ideas generated this way for a few days so that your writing is not much influenced by whatever you were reading at the time. You want to be original.

Carrying a notepad and pen everywhere you go is also a help. This lets you be ready any time an idea strikes. You may not be able to write the whole thing at the time, but you can get main concepts down.

This one particularly helps if you sell a physical product that you can look at in local stores. Take a look at who’s buying what you’d like to sell. How is it presented. I wouldn’t take notes in the store, of course, but use your eyes.

A little repurposing, a little creativity, and bit by bit you can get past even a bad case of writer’s block and start creating content again. It’s a lot more fun than being stuck.

Related posts:

1. Are You Creating Content or Clutter?
2. Do You Need to Go on a Content Diet?
3. 7 Ways to Build Backlinks to Your Content