Is Blogging Always A One Man Job?

I run a number of blogs, and some other random money making sites as well. Up until now all my blogs have been single author, meaning that I am the only person writing on them. I have always liked it this way as I can be in total control of the content on the blog.

However, with the rise in popularity of some of my blogs I have less time per blog, so I have decided to change my way of doing things and opt for a writing team on one of my new blogs.

There are of course advantages and disadvantages to forming a writing team on a blog, lets look at why some people prefer working as a team:

• More content can be produced quicker time frame


• Different views can be expressed on the same blog


• Promotion can be done by several people instead of just one, gain exposure faster


• Regular updates as more people to update

As well as the advantages there are also many disadvantages:

• Lack of control


• Posts may be publish to close together


• Some writers may write more than others


• Content could get duplicated


• Payment for writers

The decision to stay solo or work in a team is usually an easy one for each blogger, for example, ProTycoon.com will always be a single author blog, with occasional guest posts.

I have recently bought a new blog called 'Football News Online', it is a soccer news site. The problem with soccer news is that it is updating all the time, and covers such a broad area. This means that it is hard for one person to update the blog all the time. This is the perfect example of a blog that suits a writing team rather than a solo author.

One of the problems that comes with using a writing team is that the writers will usually expect a payment, you will striggle to find bloggers that are willing to work for free, but there are some out there. You then have to decide what payment method you are going to use, the two most common are:

• Monthly Fee - The blogger is paid a set amount each month.


• Revenue Share - Each blogger takes a % of the blogs earnings for the month

With my new blog I am going to opt for the 'Revenue Share' option as this will encourage the writers to promote the blog more actively.

I am still very new to this and will keep you all informed of how it progresses, this will be my guinea pig blog for writing teams. Stay tuned for progress updates.

Do you use single author or writing teams on your blog? What are your views on using writing teams?

If you are interested in becoming a writer for 'Football News Online', please feel free to get in touch. The site is still in production so sorry about the layout! My aim is to get football news from all over the world, I am currently looking for MLS and English football writers.

How To Increase Your Technorati Rank

Many of my loyal readers will know about my Technorati Targets but for those of you that do not know, I have set myself a number of targets to reach on Technorati, they are:

Target Authority: 200 - Currently 78

Target Fans:20 - Currently 5

Target Rank: 200,000 - Currently 86,554

As you can see I have managed to dramatically improve my Technorati Rank, I want to share with you how I have managed to make such a big leap up the rankings.

Before I explain how I Increased my Technorati Rank lets look at how the Technorati rank is calculated. The rank is calculated using Technorati Authority, you gain Authority by getting mentions on other blogs. Technorati believes that your blog carries Authority if you are being mentioned on other blogs.

So as you can see, to increase your technorati rank you have to get other bloggers to link back to your blog.

How did I increase my Technorati Rank:

1. I ran a contest
2. I asked other bloggers to link to my posts

As many of you will know I am currently running a contest here at ProTycoon.com, one of the ways entrants can increase their chance of winning is to write a post and link it back to ProTycoon.com. This of course has helped to increase my sites Authority and in turn helped to increase my Technorati Rank.

Another method that I have used is to tell other bloggers about my best posts, in the hope that they will link to them in their links roundup posts. This has helped me to pick up a few extra Authority points.

If I keep up these tactics I should soon be in the top 50k blogs.

Help me reach my goals by becoming a fan of ProTycoon.com

I want to know how you increase your Technorati Rank, what is your best tactic?

5 Ways To Increase Comments On Your Blog

Blogs by their very nature depend on comments, you write your posts with the view that your blogs visitors will leave their opinions and views in the small section under the post. Comments are also used as a metric by many to judge how popular your blog is, a large amount of comments can mean you are providing great content that people feel they should give their view on.

It is no surprise then that many bloggers are looking to increase comments on their blogs. I have managed to increase comments here on ProTycoon.com using many different methods. I am going to highlight the 5 most successful methods for increasing comments on your blog.

5 Ways To Increase Comments On Your Blog:

1. Ask For Comments: Sound to simple? It is very easy to end your post with "Please feel free to leave your comments below." This reminds your readers at the end of your post that they can leave their opinions and views. I have found that by simply asking people to leave thier views I get slightly more comments than on a standard post.


2. Finish Your Post With A Question: Similar to point 1, but more specific. Asking a question at the end of your post means that in order to answer the question they must leave a comment. This can have great results at the end of a post such as this one, where I could ask: "What are your best tips for increasing comments on your blog?".


3. Give Something Back: You may have noticed that I use the 'Top Commentators' widget on ProTycoon.com. I feel that it is a great way of rewarding the people that comment on my blog and also increases comments as people want to be on the top list.


4. Make It Easy: Keep the comments form simple and easy to use. Make it possible for comments to be left quickly and easily and you will see a rise in comments on your blog. Make sure your comments section is visible at the bottom of your posts, not hidden way down the page.


5. Make Your Self Approachable: Make yourself known in your comments area, reply to comments you recieve. I try to reply to all comments on my blog. People are more likely to comment if they think you will actually reply, or if you show you care about comments.

I have now revealed 5 ways to increase your RSS count.

Feel free to leave your comments below. How do you increase comments on your blog?

ProTycoon.com Themes Launched

Today I sealed the deal on ProTycoon.com's first sponsored theme. I have opened a new section on the blog totally dedicated to themes that are sponsored by ProTycoon.com

To see the first theme, head over to: 'ProTycoon.com Themes'. I have always wanted to sponsor themes and be able to give them away on my blog, I have now reached that goal and hope to add many more themes in the coming weeks.

Why do I sponsor themes?

Sponsoring themes can have many benefits:

1. Branding Your Blog


2. Increase Links Back To Blog


3. Offers Something To Your Readers

I am still looking for other WordPress themes to sponsor so if you have one that you would like ProTycoon.com to sponsor feel free to contact me.

If you use the theme, feel free to let everyone know what you think about it.

Other News

The ProTycoon.com contest has had over 75 comments, if you have not entered you still have until the end of July.

I am also looking to open up a weekly spot on my blog for guest posts, if you would like to submit a post, contact me with your details I will then ask you to send me your guest post for review.

Networking With Other Bloggers

This is a guest post by Larry from Clubblogger.com, if you want to know more about ClubBlogger.com read the ProTycoon.com review. To hear more from Larry subscribe to his RSS Feed.

Networking with other blog owners is a great way to introduce yourself to a new audeience. It works better if you find other blog authors that write about a subject similar to yours but are not in direct competition with your blog, although sometimes you can steal readers from competitors blogs.

Many bloggers network with each others by writing guest posts on each others blogs. If an exchange of guest posts does not work, you may want to offer to pay them to either write a review of your blog or write it yourself and then ask them to publish it, make sure you are careful when offering payment for your post, make sure it is worthwhile for your blog. You may want to avoid paying for exposure when you can still get free guest posts.

Networking with other bloggers can be extremely beneficial if the blog you are guest posting on already has an established audience. If your blog is properly maintained and attractive, you may be able to hold on to these new visitors and convert them into subscribers on your blog. This type of advertising is even better than Adwords or pay-per-click traffic because you have someone recommending your blog. If another blog author recommends your website, then their readers are likely to give your blog the benefit of the doubt.

There are several ways to find fellow blog authors that you can network with. Here are a few good methods:

1. Go to your favorite search engine and type in your blog’s keywords and then the word blog in quotation marks. For example, you might type “diet blogs,” or “diet blog.”


2. Another way to find related blogs is to visit the top blog directories and look for blogs in the same or complimentary niche as your blog.


3. Place an ad at the various Internet marketing forums and let everyone know that you are looking to work with other blog authors.

Working with other blog owners is a great way to get your blog in front of a new audience that is already interested in what your blog is about. How many times have you made a purchase or visited a store or website on the advice of one of your family members or friends? Why did you do it? Because you trusted them, you trusted their word. That is what you are trying to tap into by asking blog owners to allow you to address his audience.

Finding other blog owners in your niche is easy. Use the search engines and go to the blog directories and type in keywords related to your niche. Once you have found them, you can send them an email, be honest and explain why you would like to write on the blog and what you like about the blog. Don't send the same message to many bloggers as they may just ignore it, make it personal to the blog owner.

How do you find new blog owners to team up with? Do you think teaming up with other blogs is beneficial?

If you are interested in a guest post on ProTycoon.com please feel free to Contact Me.

Bloggers Survey #1

I annouced last week that I am looking to hold some 'bloggers surveys' to get a general overview of bloggers approaches to blogging. I have now compiled the first of my surveys for you to partake in.

The survey will only take a few minutes to complete with the aim of finding the answers to some of the most asked blogging quesions. I am looking to survey around 100 bloggers from many different niches.

The results of the surveys will be used create an ebook that will answer many of the top blogging quesions. I will be featuring bloggers in the ebook, so this is also a chance to get some free publicity. I will also do a roundup of each survey here on ProTycoon.com so subscribe to my feed so that you don't miss out.

Click Here to take survey

The Building RSS Group Writing Project

Yesterday I was browsing through my comments, as I do many times everyday to reply to them all and I came across the following comment from Jacob from Group Writing Project.

David, you should consider entering this tip in my Building RSS Group Writing Project:

http://groupwritingprojects.com/blog/building-rss-group-writing-project/

All you would need to qualify for over $350 in prizes is to add a link to the announcement post at the above link. Although additional tips before Sunday night’s deadline would increase your chances of winning even more.

If I am being honest I had not really heard much about groupwritingprojects.com but after reading through the link he provided, I decided that it looked like a good deal.

What is it all about?

The goal of the project is simple:

Our goal: create an ultimate guide of methods, tips and tricks explaining how to grow blog subscriber numbers.

A guide so good, so useful, that every blogger will want to keep the e-book handy for reference.

And when they do, you and your blog will be a part of it.

The project is asking people to submit articles related to RSS that will be considered for use in an E-book, that could be read by bloggers all over the world. I would recommend this project to anyone who has written, or is going to write about RSS on their blogs, it is a great way to gain some extra exposure of your blog, there are a few rules however:

List your ideas for raising blog subscriber numbers in a blog post or, if your blog readers won’t be interested in that post, prepare the list in a separate HTML file, Word or OpenOffice document.




Research as much as you like but no plagiarism please. Cite if you copy quote.




All tips should be written with the idea that children WILL be reading them.




If you do a blog post, link back to this announcement.




Recommended: use any of the 4 logos included here in your post.




Multiple entries are allowed as long as they all arrive before the deadline (13th July). We want to have as many tips as possible.




To submit your entry, leave a comment here below with your blog post’s permalink url or email your list to jacob [dot] share [at] shareselectmedia [dot] com. You can also send individual tips via comments to this post.

As you can see it is very simple to enter and has some great benefits, but it gets even better, there are also prizes up for grabs, check out this lot:

One grand prize winner will win:

1. US$100 via Paypal, sponsored by Group Writing Projects.


2. A 30-minute subscriber growth consultation with Liz Strauss, courtesy of Liz Strauss.


3. A 30-minute design consultation with David Airey, courtesy of David Airey.


4. A copy of Daniel Scocco’s Killer Domains, courtesy of Daniel Scocco and Daily Blog Tips.


5. 1-month placement of a sitewide 125×125 pixel button ad on JobMob, a US$200 value courtesy of JobMob.


6. 3-months placement of a sitewide 125×90 pixel banner ad on Designer Daily, courtesy of Mirko Humbert.


7. 1-month placement of a sitewide 125×125 pixel button ad on Group Writing Projects, courtesy of Group Writing Projects.

The blogger of the most original tip as voted by the Group Writing Projects Community will earn:

• An unlimited license to premium WordPress plugin OIOPublisher, sponsored by Simon Emery.


• 3-months placement of a sitewide text link ad on Designer Daily, courtesy of Mirko Humbert.

One other randomly selected participant blogger will win:

A copy of Liz Strauss’s The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog, sponsored by Liz Strauss.

I really urge you to come up with an RSS related post and submit it to the contest, it is a great chance to get some exposure for your blog!

I strongly suggest you head over to the Building RSS Group Writing Project now and read it all for yourself, don't miss out on these great prizes!

Analyzing Your Blogging Goals

I have posted previously about 'Setting Blogging Goals' and have also outlined some of my goals for ProTycoon.com, such as 'My Technorati Targets'. This post is all about analyzing your progress in meeting those goals.

Setting your goals is the easy part, achieving them is where the hard work is. Many bloggers will set ambitious goals, this is not a bad thing as long as you are prepared to work hard and focus on achieving them. I promote ambitious goals, but not unrealistic goals, always make your goals achievable. What is the difference between an ambitious goals and an unrealistic goal?

An ambitious goal would be to increase your RSS subscriber count from 50 to 500, it is not impossible, but requires hard work and dedication to achieve.

An unrealistic goal would be to increase your RSS subscriber count from 50 to 1000 in one day, it simply will not happen, unless a miricle occurs.

Once you have set your goals, you then need to plan how and when you are going to achieve them. By planning out how you are going to achieve your goals you are making them easier to achieve. Lets look at an example from my Blogging Goals page where I stated that I wanted to take my RSS feed count to the 150 mark. I now need to plan my way to achieving this, so instead of saying that I am going to reach this goal by the end of July, I break it down into smaller goals. This could be by saying I will aim for 75 RSS subscribers by the end of July then for 150 by the end of August. This makes my goals more achievable and helps to keep me motivated.

In order to keep track of your goals you need to be analyzing them, this is not an easy process, but it has now become a whole lot easier thanks to Vandelay Website Design and ProTycoon.com. I came across a spreadsheet designed by Vandelay which helps to track your progress per month to help you achieve your blogging goals. I have adapted the spreadsheet slightly from the original to focus it more towards blogs.

The spreadsheet allows you to track your blogs Unique Visitors, Page Views, Subscriber Count, Technorati Rank, Technorati Authority, Blog Revenue and Post Count every month so that you can view your growth. This spreadsheet should cover many of your blogging goals that you have, you can also add any extra ones onto the end.

By using the spreadsheet you can see which areas of your blog are improving well and which need a little more work.

You can download the spreadsheet here: Blogging Goal Tracker.

I have used the spreadsheet to help me track 'My Technorati Targets' over recent weeks and have achieved one of them, as I have dramatically improved my Technorati Rank, I still have two more left to achieve. In order to help me achieve another of my Technorati Targets, please add ProTycoon.com to your Technorati favourites. I will be writing a post dedicated to how I achieved my Technorati Goals, so if you want to learn how to increase your technorati stats, I suggest you subscribe to my feed, so you don't miss my future posts.

I want to know, how do you analyze your blogging goals? Have you recently achieved a goal?

Help me reach 150 RSS subscribers by Subscribing to my Feed via a Reader, or Via Email!

RSS Group Writing Project

The Bloggers Survey

I would today like to introduce you to my new project. It is called 'The Bloggers Survey', as the name suggests it will be a survey of bloggers, with the aim of obtaining valuable information to help us all improve our blogs.

How does 'The Bloggers Survey' work?

The first stage of the process is to build up a list of questions that we all have about blogging, these questions will then be turned into a survey that I hope will be completed by 1000s of bloggers, once the survey is over it will then be turned into a report that will be shared via ProTycoon.com and will hopefully answer all your questions.

What Happens Now?

We need your questions! I have already established a list of questions that people have sent me and that I have thought about. I now want to know what questions you have about blogging, so that I can help create a survey that answers all your questions.

It can be about anything related to blogging, no matter how big or small.

Post your questions in the comments section below and I will add them to the survey.

I would also like to know what you think of the survey, and also any other ideas that you think can be implemented into it?

Writing An 'About' Page

Yesterday I asked the question 'Is Your Blog Ready?', one of the benchmarks I used to judge whether or not a blog was ready was by whether it had an 'About' page.

The 'About' page of your blog should give people an insight into:

• Who you are


• What you do


• What you aim to teach


• How people can contact you

You do not need to write an essay or your life story as most visitors will use your about page to have a quick glance at who you are and what you do. If you have a look at my 'About' page, you will notice that it is very short and addresses the points I highlighted above.

By not having an 'About' page on your blog you are not allowing people to get a quick insight into who you are and what your blog has to offer, this can put a few readers off your blog as they want to know what the blog is all about at a quick glance.

You can also use your 'About' page to highlight some of your 'Top Posts' or any other blogs that you are currently working on. I have split the 'About' page and 'Top Posts' page on ProTycoon.com but will be merging them into one in the coming weeks. I have included a picture of myself in my 'About' page as it allows people to get a picture of the person who is writing the blog.

I want to know what you use the 'About' page for on your blog? And what you look for in an 'About' page on a blog that you are reading?

Further Reading:

• How To Write Your 'About Me' page?


• Adding An About Page To Your Blog

Is Your Blog Ready?

One of the biggest mistakes I see bloggers make is rushing to promoting their new blogs. Blogs by their very nature grow and develop over time. If you start to promote your site strongly from day one, then the chance is that you don’t have sufficient content in which to retain any visitors that you do attract to your site, you could also be damaging your blogs reputation early on.

In order to make the most of your blog promotion efforts you have to make sure that your blog is ready for the traffic you intend to send at it. When I say ready, what I mean is the ability to retain and hold visitors on your site and give them useful and insightful information.

In order to understand when your blog is ready you need to understand what makes a blog, a blog. Blogs generally differ from standard websites because they allow their visitors to comment on the information presented to them. They also usually provide an RSS feed which allows people to subscribe to the blog. This means that blogs have the ability to be ‘stickier’ than standard websites.

When Is A Blog Ready?

When I started ProTycoon.com I set up some benchmarks that I wanted to reach before I promoted my blog:

• 5 Pillar Articles – A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something.


• A Completed Blog Design – Nobody likes a design that is still under construction.


• An About Page Published – People want to know what the blog is about.


• RSS feed - Needs to be available and easy to find.


• Content - At least 30 Well Written Posts.


• Comments - Need to be enabled on Blog Posts, this is what makes blogs better than standard sites.

By having the pillar articles as well as a collection of well written posts I was offering valuable content to my blogs visitors giving them the ability to comment on what they were reading. Your blog needs to be offering something of quality that will make your visitors stick to your blog and subscribe.

Imagine if your local computer store tried selling you a laptop, they gave it a massive promotion, promised you a great laptop, but when you go to the store, it is just the same standard, boring old laptop you already have. It would leave you feeling a little disappointed, that is how your visitors will feel if you start promoting your webite without offering anything of quality.

You will find that you are able to hold visitors on your blog a lot easier if you are patient and make sure that your blog is ready before you start promoting it.

How do you judge when your blog is ready for promotion? What benchmarks would you use?