Content is one of the most important parts of your website. There’s a reason why many people say “content is king.” There are other important factors, and your website won’t thrive without things like traffic, but what your everyday website visitor will notice most is your content. It has to be good. How do you make sure you’re offering great content to your visitors?

Writing great blog posts is only a part of creating great content for your website. Your blog needs more.

1. Know What Your Visitors Need From Your Content

Great content isn’t always paragraphs of information. Graphics are content. Lists are content. The information on your page in general, however it’s presented, is your content.

It will never be great unless it’s what your website visitors need. If you’re selling a physical product, for example, words on the page are rarely enough. Pictures of the product, possibly including the ability to look closely at the item and at multiple angles, may make the difference. Videos can also be useful.

Don’t, however, rely excessively on pictures or videos. Not every visitor will be in a situation where they can watch a video, and you can only learn so much from pictures. As much as possible, make sure information in your pictures and videos are available in print.

Transcripts are a good idea for most videos. They make videos more accessible to the blind and hearing impaired, as well as to those who just don’t want to watch for whatever reason. Link to a transcript on another page if it’s too much to put on the same page for any reason.

If it’s information you’re providing, make sure it answers your website visitors’ needs as best you can. You can’t predict all needs, but you should have the information your site claims to offer. If it’s an information product, include information to help your visitor decide that it’s the right purchase. Your content should reflect the needs of your audience, not your own needs.

2. Include References When Appropriate

You don’t know everything, even when you’re an expert in your niche. Linking out to appropriate references makes you look better. It reinforces that you know what you’re talking about. It’s one thing to quote a statistic, for example, and quite another to show where it came from. When you’re using information from elsewhere, don’t just quote it, link to your source for it if at all possible.

For example, if you want to share with your readers how long it takes to write a blog post, you can discuss how long it takes you to do so, but it is more effective to also include post such as this one, which says that the average post takes about 3.5 hours to write.

3. Pay Attention To Popular Content In Your Niche

You should know what’s happening in your niche so that you can take advantage of it. You need to do this not only on your own website, but on the sites of major competitors. This information has become fairly easy to gather as many websites clearly display the number of Facebook likes, tweets, pins, and other social media shares a particular page has received. That’s highly useful information.

Don’t assume that your post will quickly gain a similar number of shares. The post you’re comparing your post with may have been updated a number of times through the years, allowing it to gain a large number of shares, even if the most recent update was recent.

Don’t copy popular content onto your blog, of course. Do better. Find a way to stand out from the rest.

4. Be Original

While you want to be aware of what’s popular within your niche, you don’t want to copy what others have already said. You must find a way to make your work stand out from the rest.

If you’re quoting other sites as resources, for example, find better or more current resources than what others are offering right now. Make your post as up to date and accurate as possible.

Look for details to include that others have missed or glossed over. If you can share information that hasn’t been added into similar articles, readers will like yours even if they’ve seen similar work in the past.

5. Solve Problems

Why are people reading your blog? A few people might answer that their blogs are read for entertainment purposes, but most readers are looking for information. They have a problem and they want it solved.

Even if one of your goals is to entertain your readers, it can be seen as solving a problem. In this case, the problem could be seen as boredom.

But even entertainment can be informative and solve problems.

Great content doesn’t make it difficult to find the solution to the problem your post claims to solve. It makes it as easy as possible.

Consider a variety of ways to present the solutions you offer. A video post should include a transcript so that readers who can’t watch it can still get the information. An infographic can provide a visual way to present the information that is more appealing to readers.

6. Write Great Titles

The title of your post is what draws people in. A blah title will make an otherwise great post perform poorly.

Writing great titles for your content takes practice. You won’t get it right every time.

Here are some factors to consider while writing blog post titles:

• Is it accurate?
• Does it call readers to the article?
• What feelings does it evoke? Are these the feelings you want to evoke?
• Is it too long?
• Is it too short?

Experiment with your titles. Write more than one for each post, and then choose the one you think will work best.

7. Consider The Appearance Of Your Content

No matter how carefully you’ve crafted your content, if it isn’t appealing visually, it won’t perform well.

For blog posts, this means using subheadings, bullet points, images and so forth appropriately. No one wants to read a wall of text or watch a video that rambles on and on.

Don’t add something just to add it. Each subheading should have a purpose. So should every image or change of scene in a video.

Done right, these will make your content more appealing. Done wrong, they can drive away visitors.

8. Know What The Search Engines Want

You also need to make sure that you aren’t writing the same post over and over again. If you have something to say on a topic you’ve written about before, consider updating your old post rather than writing a new one.

There was a time when bloggers could get away with writing lots of similar posts, changing up the keywords a little each time to bring in search engine traffic. That time is not now.

Search engines focus more on semantic search and understand more of what searchers are after, and what you’re really saying in your posts. It’s not just about keywords anymore – context matters.

Don’t focus purely on what search engines want, of course. Write for your readers first, and then find ways to please the search engines.

9. Set High Standards For Your Content

Creating content isn’t as easy as some people think it is. Coming up with the right words takes time and tweaking. Not every blogger can sit down and crank out the perfect article, video or podcast in a single shot. Many find it far better to write, put it aside, and edit later from a fresh perspective.

If you hire others to write for you, set a high standard for them as well. Whatever appears on your website, reflects on your website as a whole. Allow a lot of low quality content to appear and your website won’t impress visitors as a great resource.

Of course, you should also do basic things such as check spelling and grammar. Such mistakes can put website visitors off, even if the rest of the site is well done.

10. Keep Trying

You may not learn the tricks to providing great content to your niche right away, no matter how well you know it. It takes time to develop your writing style and to get accustomed to what works online. The less you work at it, however, the longer it will take to master.

Writing every day is a good place to start. You may not feel that all of it is worth publishing to your website, but no one says you have to. Put the stuff that just isn’t quite working aside – somewhere down the line you might find a use for it, even if it takes a complete rewrite to make it happen. Take the good stuff and polish it until it’s good enough for your website.

Writing every day is not the same as publishing every day. Many bloggers post only a few times a month. Don’t publish a post just because you wrote it. Publish because you think readers will love it.

The post 10 Ways To Create Great Content For Your Website appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Writing content for your website is difficult at times. Sure, there are days where the ideas just flow, but other times you can sit and stare at your monitor trying to come up with something to say. That’s just the life of a writer. Here are some ways to get ideas for a blog post that you may not have considered lately.

1. Comments From Your Social Media Pages

Did a recent post generate discussion on your social media pages? Take off from that and cover whatever new angles the comments brought up. Give credit where credit is due, but take the ideas further.

2. Respond To Someone Else’s Articles

Sometimes the stuff you read elsewhere can inspire you. Don’t limit yourself to commenting on their websites; consider whether or not an article on your own site makes for a better response. Make sure you link back to the article that inspired you. They get a link, you get inspiration for more content on your site. Do it right and there’s some serious mutual benefit.

3. Refresh Old Content

Your old posts may still be good stuff, but often enough there’s something more you can add to it or update. Little changes make a big difference. It’s also a great way to bring up a familiar to you topic to new readers who may not be aware of it.

As a matter of fact, this post is an updated old post from 2012. I went through my archives to look for posts that were good, but outdated. I made some changes in recommendations and added new information.

The other advantage to this is that the post has probably already been indexed, and depending on how old it is, may even have some social media activity on it. The search engines love seeing updated posts – it shows that you aren’t neglecting the older content on your site.

4. Answer Frequently Asked Questions

If people email you a lot of questions or post a lot of questions in your comments, you probably have some you see over and over again. Write up a good blog post. You may be able to write an entire post on a single question or cover a bunch of them in one shot, depending on how much detail is required.

Around here, I often get people asking how they can find a work at home job. As that’s usually all the information they give me, I send them to my blog post, How Do You Get Started Working From Home? That usually gets them off to a good start. That post itself was updated from its original version and has had links to relevant newer posts added since then.

5. Read Related Forums

Posting on relevant forums with a signature line can be good marketing, but it can also help you get ideas for your blog. Look at what people need from the forum. What do they talk about? If it’s relevant there, you can probably work it into a blog post.

If the forum permits links, you may be able to refer to your post when answering questions. Even if you can’t, odds are that similar questions are being searched for on Google and such.

6. Check Your Analytics

How do people find your website? The search phrases people use can tell you a lot about what people want from your site. Write more about those subjects.

Google Analytics is what I use. You can use whatever analytics your hosting company gives you, but I like Google Analytics better. It’s very detailed and free to use. It will take some time to learn to take good advantage of some features, but it’s worth it.

7. Check Relevant Hashtags

Twitter hashtags are great for finding out what people think is relevant to what you do. Keep an eye on what’s getting tagged as relevant and figure out how to use it.

You can use a hashtag generator to come up with hashtags if you aren’t sure what to use. There are quite a few out there. I keep a list of my favorites for various topics so that I don’t have to keep generating them. It’s a long list so that I can use a variety.

8. Do Keyword Research

You don’t have to have a fancy tool like Market Samurai (although I love it!) to do keyword research for your blog posts. I recently learned about Answer the Public, which gives an amazing amount of information to queries. Put in the keywords and see what happens.

If you get more ideas than you can use right now, great! Make a list and you’ll have blog post inspiration for a while. Who doesn’t need extra ideas?

9. Use A Blog Title Generator

If you have a keyword for your post, but don’t quite know what to do with it, a blog title generator can be surprisingly helpful. They mostly use the same basic titles over and over, but the good ones have a long enough list that it isn’t a huge problem.

I’ll usually change the title somewhat from what the generator gives me. Every here and there, I’ll be going through the list and realize that it has given me a great angle on a topic.

10. Compile Great Information On A Topic

Your posts, someone else’s posts, whatever makes the list useful. Linking out to other sites can be good for your site, and linking to your own information can help your readers find information they didn’t know you offered. A well compiled post can itself be a great resource for your readers.

If you want to do this regularly, consider joining a roundup post group on Facebook. People post about the kind of roundup posts they want to do, and other members share their relevant links. It can save you a lot of research, and you can usually get information to use an image from their posts if you need to.

11. Ask Your Readers What They Need

The people who know best what they’d like to hear from you are your readers. Ask them in your blog, on your Facebook page, your Twitter stream or wherever else, what they wish you’d blog about. Some days it’s much easier to get ideas for a blog post from your readers than to come up with one on your own.

12. Make A How Not To Post

How to posts are common. Have a little fun and make a how not to post. I did this some time back with my how to fall for a work at home scam post some time back – most posts are about how to avoid falling for work at home scams, so I twisted that around just a little bit for the fun of it.

13. Share Your Milestones

Have you reached a great milestone in your business? It can be as simple as an anniversary or as big as reaching a certain goal.

Readers love hearing about success. This is why so many bloggers do monthly income reports. They get attention.

14. Discuss A Myth

Most industries have their myths, such as the notion that running a home business is always ridiculously easy, what with the fancy house and cars. Discuss a myth relevant to your site and explain why it just isn’t true.

I wrote my 12 Blogging Myths You Can Ignore post a while back, for example. No matter your niche, there are probably a lot of myths.

15. Check Pinterest

What relevant pins are trending in your industry? This works better for some subjects than others, but can have great potential, especially if your take on it is highly pinnable.

Don’t copy what the established posts are saying – come up with your own perspective, and give credit where credit is due. You have to stand out with new information if you want to get anywhere.

16. Share Photos And Other Images

People love to share photos. That’s why Instagram is so popular, as well as the other visual social media sites. If you have a great photo, make a blog post around it. Use it to illustrate a point.

The best photos are ones you’ve taken yourself – you don’t have to worry about having the rights to it. Next are Creative Commons Zero photos, and there are a number of sites where you can find these. Whatever you do, make sure that you have the right to use the photos, both on your site and on social media. Getting this wrong will make your life difficult eventually and may get expensive.

17. Make An Infographic

A good infographic is hard to make, but can be utterly worthwhile. Share some great information in an infographic and make sure it’s easy to share. Include code for those who want to embed it on their own site.

Coming up with a good infographic can be difficult. Design can be challenging, but tools such as Canva and Picktochart can make it a little easier.

18. Use Quora

Quora is a wonderful place to discover what people want to know and get ideas for a blog post. You don’t have to answer questions on the site itself – if someone’s asking there, odds are people are wondering the same thing elsewhere and using a search engine to find the answer.

That said, answering questions on Quora can also be a good way to generate traffic. Keep your answers relevant, and don’t just say “check out this post” – give solid information so that people want to go to your site for more information. It’s a good way to become a trusted resource.

19. Check Current News

Is there anything happening in current news that you can relate to your subject? Be sensitive to what’s going on, but relating to news stories can bring in a lot of visitors. Consider how a particular bit of news will impact your readers or your business, for example. Done right, this can bring in a lot of traffic.

This can backfire if you aren’t sensitive, of course. People will view you and your business more negatively if you seem to be taking advantage of a tragedy.

20. Use Videos

Make your own video or embed a relevant one from YouTube and discuss it in your blog post. You don’t have to have a perfect setup to record something all your own to make use of video. Just find something and include it in an article. Making your own is most effective, of course, but it’s not for everyone.

The post 20 Ways To Get Ideas For A Blog Post appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Some kids really express themselves well in writing. They may enjoy writing their own book over the summer.

Let your child pick the subject or plan the story. It’s their book after all, although you can give advice. Depending on age, they can write it all out by hand or type it on the computer. Writing it out by hand is great practice for kids, especially those who need to improve their handwriting. Don’t forget the illustrations.

For kids too young to write, you can have them dictate the story to you. You won’t get free time for yourself this way, but your child will appreciate it.

Binding the book can be as simple as holes punched in each page and some yarn, or you can do a better job. You can even consider having your child write it in a journal so that it’s already bound.

The post Write a Book – Day 25 of 30 Days of Keeping Kids Busy During the Summer appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Running an online business is very much about making money. Money may not be your only goal, but if you want to earn a living, it’s probably a significant one. If you’re also trying to provide information, sometimes monetization is a challenge. Will you need to be more direct if you want to earn enough money for your efforts?

Why Are You Writing?

A large part of how you monetize will depend upon why you’re writing in the first place. Sometimes the reason you’re writing online in the first place doesn’t go well with being too direct about trying to make sales, at least not on every page of your site.

This is especially true if you’re writing something for another website or a print publication where it’s more about building your reputation and/or backlinks to your website. Odds are that you shouldn’t be putting in a lot of direct monetization, and it may not be allowed at all. You may simply be able to refer people back to your own website instead, and attract what income you may from there.

On the opposite extreme, you could be writing on your own website to inform people about a particular product or service you hope they’ll purchase. In that case, you want to be very direct indeed, with obvious links to click in order to make a purchase. You should still aim to be informative about what you’re offering, so that people can make a good decision and feel comfortable with what you’re offering.

There are many levels in between, and you have to decide how best to monetize them. Fortunately, you have a lot of options for monetizing an online business.

Monetizing With Banner Ads

A very simple way to monetize a website is with banner ads. You can go the low effort way and put up blocks of AdSense, pick banners to show on every page of your website, or pick each banner carefully by the topic of the page you’re placing it on. How you cope depends on your particular goals and the effort you’re willing to put into it all.

The problem is that banner ads are easily blocked. There’s plenty of software out there to handle it. Anyone who is blocking such ads won’t see the ones on your site, and so you won’t earn from them.

Monetizing With In-Text Links

Placing text link ads within your content is another good way to monetize your website. There are services which will do this for you; you just add a bit of Javascript to your site to make it work. This is easily blocked by those who don’t care to load Javascript when they visit websites, as many know that’s a common way to serve ads.

You can also place ads manually, selecting the text you’ll link yourself. This can look much better, and because it works the same as other links, is less easily blocked. You have to put in the effort to find the right products to link to, but done right, that’s the good part.

Linking within text is the obvious choice if you’re discussing a product or service, whether it’s your own or an affiliate product. Once again, it’s about making it easy for the visitor to decide to buy.

Making Appropriate Disclosures

When you monetize your content, you must be certain you’re making appropriate disclosures. If it’s your own product, it’s pretty obvious that you’re going to benefit from any purchases, so your main concerns will be with keeping your claims accurate, respecting people’s privacy, having a terms of service and so forth.

If you’re selling affiliate products, you should be clearly noting that you get paid to recommend products. Make this one really obvious. If you’re recommending products honestly, being clear about faults as well as benefits, saying you earn something when people buy from your link shouldn’t hurt your chances to earn. It’s when it seems as though all you care about is what you earn that it hurts.

Keep Testing

You may not hit upon the right kind of monetization right away. What other people are trumpeting as the greatest way ever to earn money online may not work so well for you. Keep trying out the different options and you may find one that works pretty nicely for you.

The post Can You Monetize Your Content Discreetly Or Should You Be More Direct in Your Sales Efforts? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

When you’re writing for your site, whether it’s an article, blog post or article to be distributed, the title matters. It’s what readers see first and what interests them enough to give the rest of the article a chance, even when they don’t know if your site is a great one or auto generated dreck.

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.

The post What Matters More – A Great Article Title or Great Keywords in the Title? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

There’s one big problem with knowing your topic well. Sometimes it’s really hard to teach others what you know, especially if they’re a little short on background information.

This is more true in some areas than others. If you use a lot of acronyms, you’re probably going to confuse people who don’t know what you’re talking about. Mentioning SEO or PPC may be obvious to an online marketer, but just try mentioning those to friends who don’t do so much online. Even the word “blog” is unfamiliar to many people.

While the people reading your website are at least tech savvy enough to find you, that doesn’t mean they’re advanced in any other ways.

I started a website design company as my first online effort as I was getting bored with medical transcription. My very first client taught me how difficult terminology can be. She was a dog breeder, and decidedly not into technology. But she knew she needed a website.

She was adamant. Her website must be compatible with “trains.” One of her friends had told her all about them, and it was vital that the site be compatible with “trains.”

She couldn’t believe I didn’t know what she was talking about. Didn’t I know my own business?

After a bit of back and forth, it hit me. She meant search engines.

Once I said that, she agreed that this was what she was after. She’d used the word “trains” to help her remember “search engine.” She just forgot the mnemonic.

You can see that in many people. They don’t go to a favorite search engine. They visit Google, Yahoo or Bing. They probably don’t even think of these sites as search engines. They’re more the brand name than the function.

It Happens in All Industries

It doesn’t matter which industry you’re talking about. There’s what outsiders know, what beginners know, what amateurs know and what professionals and experts know. These are all very different levels of knowledge.

Your site should be friendly to all the levels of knowledge you intend to serve. Have sections that are friendly to those who just don’t know so much about your topic.

Tutorials are one way to introduce information to various groups. Have the most basic information in tutorials that are clearly just the basics. Bring in more advanced information in more advanced tutorials.

You may want to have an email course set up to help beginners get comfortable. This encourages them to come back to your site to learn more information. You can offer more advanced courses as well, but be careful of having too many subscription links all over the place. You might confuse everyone that way.

Talk to Your Friends

If you aren’t sure if your site is friendly to people with different levels of knowledge on the topic, talk to your friends. Have them review it.

Try to have people with different levels of knowledge take a look. The one who says, “Oh, but I don’t know the first thing about (topic), I couldn’t possibly help,” is the exact person you want reviewing your site if you want to be useful to people without any basic knowledge.

Have them go over your site not only for content, but for ease of use. If you had much at all to do with the design of your site, you probably know too much about it to really be able to know where things don’t make sense. Watching other people use your site is very educational.

The post Is Your Terminology Confusing Your Readers? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

How well do you know your stuff? Pretty well, I hope. If nothing else, you should be able to research your topic well enough to write with authority about it.

Having confidence in what you write goes a long way toward making your site credible. If you don’t sound as though you know more than the person reading on your site, why should they buy from you?

I’ve struggled with this often myself. It’s not that I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s that I’m not used to being assertive about it. In person I’m very quiet and not remotely assertive. I was the quiet kid in high school who always knew the answer when called upon, but never volunteered to answer. It’s a hard habit to change in my writing.

You Do Know More Than Most

If you’ve done your research on your niche or really dealt with the topic in your own life, you probably do know more about it than many of your readers. There’s a reason people look for information online. They aren’t looking for things they already know. They’re looking for things they want to know.

If you have a large informational site, you’re probably getting visitors with all kinds of backgrounds. Some are completely new to the topic and want to learn everything. Others know quite a bit, but are looking to learn more.

Write for all levels. Some topics will be of more general interest to your readers, while the basics won’t interest the more experienced readers. But leaving the beginners out means they’ll leave your site and find someone who can help them figure things out.

By the same token, the more knowledgeable readers will need content that meets their needs.

Be Honest About What You Know

Some people say fake it until you make it. I don’t like that theory.

I’d rather keep learning about the things I don’t know yet, and then teach them to others. It’s challenging, but then I’m less likely to be called out for being completely wrong.

I don’t mean don’t take risks. Just do your research and have some facts on your side, especially if you’re getting into things where there may be disagreement. Not everything is black and white, and a little controversy isn’t a bad thing at all. Sometimes even a lot of controversy is a good thing… handled professionally, of course.

You can’t be expected to know everything. Sometimes a good strategy is to ask your readers what they think. Many people love to share their knowledge but have no intention of running their own sites. Or they do, and have the perfect link for you.

It’s rather like how the sensei for my kids’ karate class puts it. He says “can’t” is a four letter word. “I’ll try” is much better.

By the same token, you don’t have to say “I don’t know.” You can say “Let me find out” instead.

Enjoy Yourself

It’s fun being the person who knows stuff, whatever kind of stuff it is you know. Have fun with it. Show your personality.  Don’t be a know-it-all, be a solid resource.

The post Say It With Authority and They’ll Believe You appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Some days one of the hardest things to get is an idea. It doesn’t matter how much you love your site, your topic or anything, sometimes that first idea is just really hard to get.

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.

The post How Do You Get Ideas from Other People’s Content Without Plagiarizing? appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

One thing that works well for me is to have generic projects that I work on regularly. At need I switch them to focus on particular sites, or drop them entirely if something special needs to be done, but having regular things I do really helps keep things moving.

Write 5 Articles or Blog Posts Per Day

This is actually down from in the past when I could easily manage 7 in a day. But with a baby I have less writing time, and this goal reflects that.

At that, it’s a really challenging goal to reach right now. A lot of days I don’t manage it because time can be just so tight. That and the baby loves to pull up on my desk and pound the keyboard. Not a good thing when I’m trying to write. How I long for an office door some days!

Writing 5 a day means that I can get all the blog posts for one week, Monday through Friday, done in a single day. If I like, that means the rest of the week any articles written for that site can be for article submission.

Since I write for more than one site, it does not mean that I could write four times as much content for distribution as I do for my site. If I could do that, I’d probably just slightly up the blog posting frequency for a better balance.

10 Blog Comments Per Day

This one challenges me much of the time, but it is a bit easier to schedule. I can read through blog posts with my little Busy Bee on my lap, keyboard pushed in on its shelf under the desk, and figure out which posts I want to comment on later.

It’s nice to have something to do where I can spread the effort out a little. It doesn’t work all the time, and I think commenting earlier is better than later for actual views of my comments, but it helps.

10 Forum Posts Per Day

I’ve been slacking off on this one way too long.

Forums can be a huge time suck, but appropriate forums that allow signatures can bring in respectable traffic if you keep your posts interesting. It’s not so much about advertising as it is building a reputation as a helpful participant in the forum.

Other Link Building Activities

The trouble with blog comments and forum posts is that they can be no follow on many sites. That’s not that bad a thing if you focus on eyeballs rather than search engines, but you want a range of links coming in to your site.

Social bookmarking sites can be useful, and they go well beyond delicious. Seek them out and add your links as appropriate to the particular site. But pay attention to the rules so your links aren’t just dropped as spam.

I’ve quit doing link exchanges long since. They’re rarely worth the trouble. I had a small link exchange directory on this site for a time and the real link to random spam ratio was terrible and I finally deleted the whole mess rather than having to go in and delete spam submissions.

Finding the Time???

The worst of it all is finding the time for all of this. If you have the budget, I strongly suggest figuring out what you can put out to a virtual assistant. Link building can be a good choice for example… tedious, time consuming and really doesn’t need your personal touch. Let someone else have that headache.

Anything that you need to do on your own, figure out when your most productive hours are and use them! Turn off Twitter, Facebook and anything else that might distract you. Let TiVo get your favorite shows if you’d miss them.

If the kids are awake and the weather’s nice, send them outside. If it’s not nice, have them dress appropriately and send them out for a bit anyhow! Well, not into a blizzard or anything, but if warmer clothes are all that’s needed, they can play outside for a time.

These plans are of course only approximate, and will change regularly. But having a general outline has always worked better than a solid schedule for me.

What works for you?

The post My Daily Work Plans for the New Year appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.

Writing is one of the most popular work at home jobs. It’s something many people can do, even if not everyone loves to write. The equipment needs are minimal and the demand is there. Pay, however, is extremely variable, depending on the kind of writing you want to do and what you ask for.

Qualifications/Training Needed?

Writing jobs don’t always have a lot of qualifications listed, but other times you need specific training or the ability to research unfamiliar topics well enough to write clearly about them.

There are a few kinds of writing. Copywriters, for example, write ad copy. If you’re good at this it can be one of the best paid types of writing job. It involves a lot of testing and practice to learn what works best and what works for particular markets. Little changes can do a lot.

Article writing is very popular now that a lot of websites need it for promoting their sites. However it pays far less on average. The more you get paid as an article writer, the better your research on a given topic will be expected to be.

Any paid writer needs to have excellent grammar and spelling skills. Don’t trust to spell check alone, as it is notorious for missing the use of an incorrect but properly spelled word. If you’re too lazy to proofread, working as a writer is probably not for you.

Job Duties

Write whatever it is you’ve been asked to work on. What you write depends on the kinds of work you choose to look for.

Equipment Needed

You probably have everything you need. A computer with Microsoft Word or Office and an internet connection is about it.

Where to Search for Jobs

Writing job listings at Home with the Kids
Blogging job listings at Home with the Kids
Craigslist (beware of many, many scams!)
Hire My Mom
Home Job Stop
Elance
Guru

Related Scams

The main scams to look out for are paid job boards that really don’t offer any jobs, as well as any job posting that offers an exceptional amount of pay for the amount of work done.

Poetry contests and similar are also very common scams for writers, as are writing contests.

Recommended Reading

88 Money-Making Writing Jobs
The Definitive Guide to Making Money Online With Your Writing
ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
6 Figure Freelancer

The post Writer – Weekly Work at Home Job Idea appeared first on Home with the Kids Blog.