You can create more content for your blog – and generate more business – if you work in batches. Instead of creating videos, or writing blog posts, one by one, do them in batches. Organize your workspace so that you can process several videos/posts at the same time. Videos and blog posts don’t have to be long – but they have to be useful to the reader or viewer.

How To Create More Content & Be More Productive

Seven ways to be more useful to your readers:

1. Current – Talk about a current issue that the reader can relate to – and that you helped solve. Keep it simple. Don’t crow. Don’t take all the credit.
2. Problem – Discuss some common problem/business situation that arises every day and show how it can be fixed, reduced or mitigated against.
3. Angle – Provide an observation that encourages the reader to make a comment. “Ever been to London, here’s something I didn’t know about using mobile phones here…”
4. Ask for help. Ask the reader what they think about a business or technical problem you’re having. 
5. Challenge the reader. Ask them if they agree with you?
6. Provide useful information. Does it really help? No-one wants to hear you ramble. Share something that helps that other person with their business.
7. Focus in one area. Keep your blog under control. Keep drilling-down into these areas. Go narrow, not wide.

What do you think?

I know I’ve missed something here. What is it?

Before I start!

If you have any questions about how to develop a writing career online (which is more appropriate for me these days), technical writing or working as a consultant, just drop me a line.

Eric flicked me an email a few days back about Adsense and asked if it was worth the effort and what other alternative information products/services should he look at. Here’s an extract of the email I sent back. Hi Eric, thanks for the kind words. As you can imagine, it’s hard to know if you’re going in the right direction with a site like this, so every time I get a word of encouragement it gives me a little boost to continue.

I run a few other sites as well as this is/was designed to complement their offerings and also to act as a funnel for material that doesn’t suit elsewhere. www.wordtipsandtricks.com and www.klariti.com are the other two babies I take care of.

I noticed you use Google AdSense. I’ve been reading up on it this week and trying to separate the reality from the mire of get rich quick schemes. How’s it working for you? Has it been worthwhile? FWIW Tom Johnson is also worth reading www.idratherbewriting.com as is Seth Godin sethgodin.typepad.com <I noticed you use Google AdSense.

I’ve been reading up on it this week and trying to separate the reality from the mire of get rich quick schemes.

How’s it working for you?

Has it been worthwhile? Yes and No. Yes in the sense that it does work.

If you can get a nice stream of traffic to your site, it will bring in revenue. But, to keep it in perspective, I get over 200k page impressions per month on the sites.

This generates about 1k USD.

Now, 1k is fine but it takes a lot of effort to get 200k people to click around you sites every month. I should add that I haven’t really tried to ‘optimize’ the site for Adsense as some webmasters do. The adds are there and if you want to click them, then it’s a bonus.

But, here’s a tip! Looking at the stats, it’s the Search box that generates the most revenue, not the ads themselves.

You can create a Google Search box, link it to your Adsense account, and use this as a way to encourage visitors to surf around your site.

See  http://www.google.cn/webmasters/tour/tour1.html And here’s an even better tip! You can configure the Google Search box so that it searches specific sites only.

See  http://www.google.com/cse Google Custom Search in 30 second

You can setup Google Custom Search to create a customized search experience for your own website.

• Include one or more websites, or specific specific webpages
• Host the search box on your own website
• Host the results on your own website
• Customize the look and feel of the results to match your site
• Provide fast and relevant search results
• Make money with AdSense for Search
• Automatically search across links, bookmarks or blogrolls with Custom Search on the fly
• Control branding and enhance results presentation via XML results
• Provide quick indexing of your website via On-Demand indexing
• Embed a Custom Search Element into your website for a highly customized in-line search experience.

Sounds impressive, no?

In other words, you can limit the search to your site and other sites that you specifically want the visitor to go to, such as affiliate sites or partner sites (you could link up with a similar site and arrange cross-searching). With that said, it does take time to master Adsense, but if you have a long-term strategy, yes it is worthwhile.

I’d recommend using the Adsense plug-ins you can get for WordPress as these help automate the process. Real time-saver.  Why No? Because other areas are much more profitable! Such as? Method123 have been a winner for me for over 4 years. See: Method123 Project Management Templates There a lot of sites offering affiliate/partner programs but this is absolute gold dust! Their site is right when it says:

• Our Affiliate program differs from others because:
• We are a profitable company and only do business over the web
• We offer large affiliate commissions
• Our average sales amount is extremely high
• Our conversion rate is also high

So, if can write articles about project management or anything to do with running projects, then you can link to their site, drive traffic over and claim your commission. Things you could write about might be:

• 10 ways to improve your Business Case
• Learn how to write a Feasibility Study in 24 hours
• What you need a Project Charter
• 7 Ways to develop a Project Office Checklist

It’s pretty straightforward. I use other affiliates, such as GoDaddy, aWeber and Paypal.

They’re all fine but Methds123 has worked very well for me. FWIW – their head office is in New Zealand and you get that nice feeling that you’re working with a real company whereas with other programs you get an auto-responder back and then a relationship manager after a few days.

Darren Rowse has a great article if you’re thinking of getting into blogging. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/10/successful-blogging/ 13 Things I’ve Learned about Successful Blogging [My 5000th Post on ProBlogger]

Before I forget, Amazon has been a total time-waster.

When I consider the effort v the results I got back – just avoid! I know others recommend it but if you apply yourself and find a 2 or 3 quality affiliate programs, you’ll do much better.

Regards, Ivan

I got this error message when I clicked on the Help button when logged in the PayPal Button Designer.

‘You have requested an outdated version of PayPal. This error often results from the use of bookmarks.
Who wrote this I wonder?

You have requested an outdated version of PayPal.

What versions of PayPal are there?

This error often results from the use of bookmarks.

Maybe.

Or maybe the PayPal content management system hasn’t synced the different releases, which is probably the real reason.

Even so, I’m surprised these error messages blame the user (me!) rather than just saying ‘we messed up’ and are now looking into it.

Is that too difficult?

You can’t upgrade to the ‘all-new Yahoo! Mail’ if you’re PC setting are under 1024 x 768 pixels. At least that’s what happened this afternoon when I tried to upgrade. This is the error message you get from Yahoo.

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They give me a few options:

1. You can continue with your current settings, but you won’t be able to enjoy the full effect.

2. To continue to the all-new Yahoo! Mail anyway… [which sounds very lame, imho]

3. Go to Yahoo! Mail

4. Go to Yahoo! Mail Classic just this one time [read that again -just this one time! Am I back in high-school?]

5. Or better yet, try increasing your screen’s resolution.

Jerry Wang and co tells me, “If you’re running Windows, here’s how:
Click the Start button, and select Settings, then Control Panel. Next, double-click Display and click the Settings tab. Use the slider to set your monitor to a 1024 x 768 pixel resolution.

The problem is that these are my settings. See here:

Anyway, they’re pretty friendly about it and tell me to ‘Switch back to Yahoo! Mail Classic indefinitely — or at least until your system is ready.’

Until my system is ready…

and not until Yahoo gets its act together.

Could be a long time.

Question: Have you made the switch to Yahoo Mail yet? Let me know how it went or better still what it looks like.

From the outside, looking in.

Ivan

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