I’m excited to announce today’s launch of my new blog, Side Hustle Blogging!  It is a place to share tips, tricks and lessons learned on the subject of blogging.

Over the last year or so I’ve received a number of emails from new bloggers asking for direction on starting blogs of their own.  While I try to respond to everyone, I felt like I was repeating a lot of the advice, and rarely had a chance to follow up when I learned something new.

As a temporary solution, I began sharing the occasional “Be a Blogger” series post here at Frugal Dad, but I always wanted to separate the content by starting a new site.  I didn’t for a couple reasons. First, I thought, “Who the heck would want to read what I have to say about blogging?”  True enough; I’m still a relatively small fish in the big blogging pond.  But, I’ve learned a thing here and there, and made some mistakes along the way I might could help others avoid.

I was really pressed for time during the last half of 2008.  Many of you are aware of the family medical emergency we experienced, and juggling my family, work and blogging responsibilities was hard enough without adding a new blog to the mix.  While things haven’t completely settled down personally, I’m ready to get rolling on the new blog.  If we wait for the perfect time, we will wait forever!

It is my hope that Side Hustle Blogging develops into a place where we learn from each other. Anyone making their “side hustle” blogging should find something relevant, but the topics won’t stop at simply writing for the web.  I plan to include posts on topics such as monetization, marketing, scheduling, entrepreneuriship, taxes, etc.  You can see there will be some overlap in the themes I discuss here at Frugal Dad, but with a spin geared towards those who blog.

I look forward to seeing all of you over at Side Hustle Blogging!  Drop me a comment and say hello, or just take a few minutes to peruse the articles there.  And don’t worry, I plan to continue my daily blog schedule here at Frugal Dad.

This is the third and final article in a 3-part series on my New Year’s resolutions 2009.  Be sure to check out my first and second resolutions.

Happy New Year!  I hope you had an enjoyable New Year’s Eve celebration with family and friends, and are ready to turn the calendar on another wonderful year.  I’ve always enjoyed the New Year holiday because it seems like we have so many opportunities ahead, and a clean slate to start going after our goals.  I’ve already outlined two of my goals related to money and personal well-being, so now I’ll let you in on my goals for blogging.

Double Blogging Goals for 2008

I had a number of goals when I started this blog, and only a few of them had any quantitative measurements.  Mostly, I wanted a place to hold myself accountable for living a more frugal lifestyle, and a place where I could help others with family finances by telling a little about what works (and hasn’t worked) in our lives.  I feel Frugal Dad has been a success on those two accounts, but I am a results person–I like to see numbers and measurements and set goals to best them month over month.  So here are the three areas I tracked last year, including the personal goals I had established to meet by year-end, and where I would like them to be by the end of 2009.

Subscribers

This is one area where I had a hard time setting a realistic goal.  After looking around the top 100 personal finance blogs I quickly recognized that the top echelon was way out of reach (40,000+ subscribers).  At the time, those that had been around for about a year had attracted 2,000 subscribers, and several had around 4,000.  I shot for somewhere near the middle-3,500 subscribers in year one.

FeedBurner (the service I use to track subscribers) decided to take the New Year’s holiday off and dropped my count by a couple thousand, but as of 12/30/2008 I had 4,899 subscribers here at Frugal Dad.  Here’s a visual representation (from PopTopRanks.com):

(Those dips are other times when FeedBurner took the day off–to the frustration of bloggers everywhere!)

In 2009, I’d like to double my original goal to 7,000 subscribers.  In the first year, subscribers tend to grow exponentially, as is shown by the curve represented above.  In the second year that tends to flatten out a bit as you sort of saturate the market, or niche, that you are in.  Feel free to help me reach that 7,000 subscriber goal by sharing articles with friends, or telling them about Frugal Dad offline.  Besides a $50 experiment with AdWords (that failed miserably because I didn’t really know what I was doing), I spent no money advertising Frugal Dad this past year, and don’t plan to do so in 2009–that just wouldn’t be very frugal!

Traffic

Again, this is a tough goal to set when starting up a new blog.  Unless you are overly confident in your ability to attract visitors from all over the web it is unlikely that you will see more than 10,000 page views a month in the first few months of blogging.  I set a wild goal of receiving 100,000 page views a month by the end of 2008, and with the exception of a couple spikes in the summer, it took nearly a year to reach that on a consistent basis.  Here’s a look at the growth according to Sitemeter (the yellow bars represent visitors, and the red bars represent page views):

I expect the graph of traffic from 2009 will be a little smoother (and hopefully remain above 100,000 page views per month.  I have set an aggressive goal of reaching 250,000 page views per month in each of the last three months of 2009.

Income

When I first started Frugal Dad I didn’t set an income goal, not because I am some morally superior blogger who writes for intrinsic rewards only, but because I didn’t have a clue how people made money with blogs.  Soon, I was learning about various ad types and terms like CPM and affiliates and it was a whole new world to me!  I thought it would be really something to earn at least half of my full time income with blogging each month.

To avoid sharing specific numbers, I’ll just say that by the end of 2008 I am earning exactly half of my full-time income with blogging (if you average earnings over the second half of the year–when things really started to pick up).  Here’s a month-by-month look at percentage of full-time income earned from blogging and freelance writing endeavors:

I’d like to think I am starting 2009 with a little more knowledge on the potential earnings from blogging, but I admit to being way behind the curve compared to others who are much more successful, financially.  There are examples cropping up almost weekly of bloggers leaving the workplace to become a “problogger.”  I doubt that will be me any time soon, but I do have a stretch goal for making that a little closer to reality by the end of 2009.

By the end of 2009 I will be earning 100% of my full-time income through blog monetization and related writing activities. Yes, that means if I accomplish this I will have effectively doubled my personal income in two years.  Fingers crossed!

To recap, here are my three blogging goals for 2009:

• Attract 7,000 subscribers
• Receive 250,000 page views per month
• Earn 100% of my regular, full-time earnings

Finally, I’d like to wrap up my New Year’s Resolutions series by thanking all of you for a successful 2008.  Without your willingness to be part of the community here the site would have folded a long time ago.  I have enjoyed getting to (virtually) know many regular readers and fellow bloggers, and consider a number amongst my personal friends.  My single regret when it comes to writing here at Frugal Dad was that I didn’t start it sooner!

As many long-time readers know, it was a tough year for us personally, and we look to 2009 with optimism.  I wish you and yours a very Happy New Year!

Interested in starting up your own blog?  I host my blogs with HostGator–a great host with awesome support!

No, that’s not a typo. If a “problogger” blogs full-time for a living, then I must only be a “preblogger,” because I cannot afford to quit my full-time job, but cannot afford to quit blogging, either. The majority of bloggers out there are prebloggers, working at a job or as a work-at-home parent while making at least a part-time living as a blogger. Only a select few are successful enough to graduate to problogging status.

What Does a Blogger Do, Exactly?

To those who have never given blogging a try it might seem like a simple activity. I felt that way before I started. I mean, how hard is it to sit down and write out your thoughts on a particular subject for a few minutes each day? Well, any blogger will tell you that there is more work to blogging than meets the eye.

For starters, coming up with a steady stream of topics to share with your audience is a challenge. There are weeks when ideas seem to fall into your lap (conversations with friends spark an idea, another blogger’s post provides inspiration, etc.).  And there are weeks when you suffer from sever writer’s block and feel like having to come up with yet another article on how to save money might actually cause physical pain.

Having an idea for a blog post is only half the battle. You have to actually write the post, and hope to do it in a semi-engaging fashion to entertain and inform your readers. If you are not writing with the idea of attracting readers, things get pretty lonely. After all, pouring your soul into a little visited blog is like giving the performance of your lifetime from the stage of an empty theater.

I usually spend thirty minutes to an hour writing, rewriting, adding links to and finding pictures for each post. Some are shorter, and some take much longer, but 30-40 minutes is probably a good average. When the post is complete I schedule it to be posted the next morning (or later that same morning, on some occasions) and that’s it, right? No, there’s more.  Much more.

Interacting With Readers

You may have noticed at some point that I share my email address with readers in the contact section. I enjoy nothing more than hearing from readers either through comments or emails. I try to respond to each one, but often it takes me a couple days to work through the growing monster that is my inbox! And readers aren’t the only people that send me emails. Advertisers, public relations reps, authors, bloggers, journalists, etc. all send messages. I don’t mean to imply each of these types email every single day, but that’s a pretty accurate sampling of the types of messages I get. When I first started blogging my daily emails totals were in the single digits, but now it is not uncommon to receive over 100 emails a day.

Marketing My Blogs

Up to this point, I have not spent any money advertising Frugal Dad, save a trial month of using Google Adwords. In the early stages my single advertising method was commenting on other blogs. I made a daily habit of commenting on 40-50 blogs. Unfortunately, that number has dwindled over time, and now I do good to leave comments on 10-20 of my favorites. I read many more blogs than that, but only have time to comment on a precious few. If you are new to blogging and want to attract readers, commenting on other blogs in your niche is a great way to get your name out there. Don’t just spam blogs with comments, but leave thoughtful remarks that add to the discussion.

My Typical Day

I thought it might be fun to give you a peek at my typical day. The problem is, I have no typical days. Over the last year I have tried to get into a routine of blogging early in the morning, or late in the evening, or when I first get home from work, but I find it hard to stick to any particular schedule. After all, I have a wife, two kids, a full-time job, two blogs, freelance projects, and an attention-starved Labrador (my third child) all competing for my attention. So, I have learned to adapt by squeezing in time to write when I can.

Since I am not as organized as other bloggers who manage to carve out regular time during their day for blog activities, I can only give you a sample schedule from this past Tuesday and Wednesday:

Tuesday

• 6:00am:  Wake up, read through blog emails, review stats, make sure today’s post is up and running. Approve comments held for moderation.

• 8:00am:  Arrive at my full time job.

• 12:00pm:  Sneak a quick check of the blog stats, emails, moderate comments over lunch.

• 2:00pm:  Travel to Atlanta to visit my mom (she’s been hospitalized the last 70 days recovering from a stroke)

• 11:00pm:  Back home from Atlanta. Write tomorrow’s post, answer emails, moderate comments. Post five or six comments on other blogs. Check my snail mail, bills, bank account balance, etc.

• 1:00am:  Lights out.

Wednesday

• 6:00am:  Wake up, read through blog emails, review stats, make sure today’s post is up and running. Approve comments held for moderation.

• 8:00am:  Arrive at my full time job.

• 12:00pm:  Sneak a quick check of the blog, emails, moderate comments.

• 5:00pm:  Skipped the gym and head for home.

• 6:00pm:  Talked to a magazine editor about submitting an article.

• 7:00pm:  Wrote first half of post after dinner, answered ten emails.

• 8:00pm:  Bedtime routine with the kids.

• 9:00pm:  Wrote second half of tomorrow’s post, checked on stats, sorted through emails (nearly 150 thanks to blog contest), made a small template change to Frugal Dad in an effort to improve blog monetization, read snail mail, checked stats at my blog host, thumbed through new Kiplingers magazine for inspiration, outlined three blog post ideas.

• 12:30am:  Lights out.

The Tipping Point

As you can see, there isn’t much free time in that schedule. Somewhere in there I also interact with readers and friends on Twitter, and Stumble a few articles each day for use in roundup posts.  I also participate in a number of forums on a variety of topics from frugal living to blogging.  In addition to the crazy weekday schedule I spend about half a day on Saturday or Sunday playing catch up on all the things that have slipped during the week. I try to have a sort of blogging marathon to crank out three or four posts to pull from during the week if I get in a jam (I have to work late, kids get sick, I get sick, etc.).

The inevitable question becomes, “At what point can I become a problogger?” Well, that’s a good question, and one I don’t have an answer to just yet. While I could easily fill a day with blogging responsibilities and freelance opportunities, I cannot yet replace my full-time income plus make up for the loss of benefits. The problem is that the list of responsibilities is growing, and my full-time job is not getting any easier, so something will have to give.

My second blog, TipDad.com, has not seen as much activity as I would like. It has been a while since I posted anything at Wise Bread or Parenting Squad (though I did recently sneak in a book review at Parenting Squad). Emails are languishing longer in my inbox, and more and more comments are stacking up without my acknowledgment.

At some point I will either have to take a leap of faith, scale back on my full-time work, or put my other writing initiatives on hold. Who knows what the future holds, but for now I’m enjoying my status as a preblogger.

If you are interested in blogging, or are currently a blogger and would like to read more about my trials and tribulations, check out my “Be a Blogger” series roundup.

Photo courtesy of iChaz

For the first ten posts of the Be a Blogger series I mostly ignored the topic of monetization.  This was by design. While I understand there are benefits of monetizing your blog early on in the process, I didn’t want to focus on the money-making aspects of blogging until the fundamentals were nailed down.

People begin blogging for a variety of reasons–some for money, some for love, and some for the love of money.  I started my blog for three reasons:

• As a creative outlet.  My full time job does not require much creativity in terms of writing, so I thought blogging would appeal to the entrepreneurial writer bottled up inside me for over 30 years.

• To be a source of inspiration for others.  Sometimes I think I irritate more people than I inspire, but because the ones who are irritated are the loudest, I hope it is only a skewed perception.  Here lately the number of supportive comments and emails I receive are proof that I’m on the right track.  A few weeks ago I received an email from a young college student who opened her first emergency fund inspired by one of my posts.  Knowing that you have a real impact on people’s lives through writing is very motivating.

• It beats mowing lawns.  To help the debt snowball along I mowed lawns on the weekends last summer, something I had also done during one summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college.  I quickly discovered two things:  ten years is plenty of time to get grossly out of shape and to become spoiled by air conditioning.  Since I was doing this on top of my full time job I stayed pretty worn out.  It was time to find an easier side hustle (physically).

That’s Great, but What About the  Money?

Let’s face it–if you want to make money blogging you have to treat it as a business.  Or at least, you have to think like a business person.  Blogging has opened my eyes to the world of online marketing in ways I never knew existed prior to last December, and I thought I was pretty business savvy.  Many advertisers are finding out that the internet has more potential for reaching eyeballs than traditional advertising, and blogs are a fresh way to deliver their message.  Obviously, you have to balance monetization with having a user-friendly presentation, and it is something most bloggers struggle with.

“But I’m Only Making $5 a Day!”–Is This Worth It?

I remember after only a couple months of blogging I became glued to my blog stats and advertising accounts like a nervous senior waiting outside his professor’s office for grades to be posted.  I was addicted to the numbers, but disappointed by them constantly.  In March I figured out that from all my efforts I was making $5.00 a day–not even enough for a value meal at McDonalds.  However, after applying some quick math I realized I wasn’t doing so bad after all.

At 3% interest, my $3,000 emergency fund was spinning off about $0.25 a day at ING Direct (what’s a post about monetization without an affiliate link?).  I wondered how much money I’d have to have in there to generate $5.00 a day in interest.  $60,000!  That’s right; it would take $60,000 at 3% interest to generate $5.00 a day.  I felt much better about my online earnings from that point forward.  The income from blogging is not totally passive, because I do still work a number of hours each day writing, editing, commenting, emailing, etc, but I still get a kick out of going to sleep at night and waking up to find you’ve earned money.

Time To Quit the Day Job?

Not quite, but it is certainly feasible.  Many well-known bloggers are now probloggers and make writing their full time gig.  Of course many of them have safety nets in place (a large emergency fund, a working spouse, etc.), so it isn’t for everyone, and requires some thorough planning.  I doubt I will ever earn enough to completely replace my full time income, but once my debts are paid off and I have a one-year emergency fund in place, I wouldn’t need that much income to live comfortably.  Yes my friends, the wheels are turning.

Ready to start your own blog?  I host my blogs with HostGator–a great host with awesome support!

About six months ago I started putting together a “Be a Blogger” series of posts that recorded some of my thoughts on starting a blog, writing for the web, etc.  As I said in the inaugural post, I’m certainly no expert, but felt perhaps others interested in blogging could learn from my mistakes.  In the last several days I’ve received a few messages from people looking for guidance on starting a blog, naming their project, and marketing their work.  Seemed like a good time to put together a consolidated post of my previous “Be a Blogger” entries.

I’d like to start sharing these “Be a Blogger” posts again on a more regular basis as I’ve learned some new techniques (and made many more mistakes).  Look for future posts on weekends, or when I feel like a break from the personal finance stuff.  I realize many of you are not bloggers, but I hope that it will inspire some of you to take the plunge, or at least be entertained by a sort of behind-the-scene look at what it takes to run a blog.

Be a Blogger Top Ten

• So You Want to Be a Blogger? This one started it all.  Kind of funny to read that I used the 100 subscriber milestone to kick off the new series.  Since then, about 3,000 of you have joined, and I’m honored to have each of you following me here at Frugal Dad.

• Identify Your Target Audience.  The advice here is geared towards writing for the web, but as I’ve learned from offline writing assignments since, identifying your target audience is a key element in any writing project.

• What’s in a Name? Of all the tasks required in setting up your blog, this one may be the most important (and is often the most difficult).  There are all sorts of factors to consider, from search engine optimization, to offline marketing, to online branding.

• How to Write for the Web.  As I mentioned earlier writing for this blog, and for a couple other online spots, has opened the door for a various offline writing projects.  I found out quickly that writing for the web successfully required the ability to condense things to a few major points, and make use of formatting strategies differently from offline projects to make important points standout.

• Set Your Post Frequency.  Early on, I settled into an every day routine here at Frugal Dad, but I am not as dedicated with other projects.  If I had more time I could probably crank out two or three articles a day on a range of topics, but full-time work and family obligations still require the majority of my attention.  If you aren’t able to put something out every single day, don’t worry–there are some arguments floating around the blog world extolling the benefits of a three-times-a-week or similar reduced posting schedule.

• Lessons Learned From a Traffic Surge. In March of 2008, with Frugal Dad barely off the ground, I received a mention from LifeHacker.com on my square foot gardening article via Being Frugal.   With over 14,000 unique visitors overnight things really took off here at Frugal Dad, and long-time readers often refer to the square foot gardening article as they way they discovered me (which is funny considering I didn’t have much luck with gardening).  Lynnae at Being Frugal and I still keep in touch and she has developed one of the top frugal living blogs in the personal finance niche.  I owe much of my early success to her linking to that article.

• Selecting a Hosting Service.  Besides selecting a name, deciding where to host your project is probably the second toughest decision when starting a blogging project.  There are a myriad of choices out there ranging in expense.  Being the “Frugal Dad” that I am, I went with the cheapest option early on.  While I have had to make a few upgrades to compensate for increased traffic, I have been pleased overall with the service from my host.

• Five Cures for Writer’s Block.  By this point I had been writing every single day for four months, and I was beginning to suffer from a bit of writer’s block myself.  I went on a search for inspiration and found some unique ideas to generate article topics.  I still use most of these methods today when inspiration doesn’t come naturally.

• When Inspiration Hits.  The opposite of writer’s block occurs when ideas for articles are coming faster than you can write them.  This post deals with creating a system to capture these ideas for later use, either on the go or at home.

• Tools for Organizing Ideas.  A follow up to my When Inspiration Hits post, this is one of the more informative guest posts ever shared here at Frugal Dad.  Mrs. Micah put together a great review of the tools she uses to keep her blog ideas organized.

Ready to start your own blog?  I host my blogs with HostGator–a great host with awesome support!

Back next week with the Sunday Conversation.  The following is a guest post from Mrs. Micah. Mrs. Micah writes about personal finances, freelancing, and getting out of debt at MrsMicah.com. She also offers blog consulting services at hire.mrsmicah.com.

Previously in the Be a Blogger series, Frugal Dad wrote about capturing the idea when inspiration hits. Whether you use a cell phone, PDA, or even a scrap of paper, it’s critical to get ideas before they slip away. You will forget them.

But that’s only the first part. I have scribbled dozens of phenomenal ideas on paper or written them down in notebooks only to lose the scrap or forget that I even wrote the idea down in the first place.
The second and equally critical thing to do next is collect your ideas.

Then, there’s the third part. You actually have to find the time to carry them out. If you’ve got them all together, you can always pop in and pick which one you’re going to write about today. I find it easier to get a little reminder at a time when I’m free to write. The reminder is usually a short message like “Write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized!”

I’m going to explore two useful web tools which I use to store ideas and schedule when I’ll do them. If you’re not a blogger and you’ve made it this far, stick around. These tools are useful for anyone without a perfect memory.

How to Use Gmail’s Filters

If you don’t use Gmail, skip down to using Sandy for another way to store ideas online.

Most of us use Gmail on a basic level. Send e-mail, read e-mail, archive e-mail. Search e-mail when we need something. Until recently I was very very mildly organized and had 2 labels I used for storing links I’d e-mailed myself.

But there’s so much more that Gmail can do. For instance, you can use it as a way to store post ideas. Here’s the skinny.

Let’s assume you use the fictional e-mail address google@gmail.com. Thing is, you have more than that one e-mail address. E-mails sent to google+mrsmicah@gmail.com will show up in your inbox, as will e-mails sent to go.ogle@gmail.com. Let’s say that you decide to send every idea as an e-mail to google+ideas@gmail.com.

Now, suppose you set up a filter in Gmail. The image below shows what the second step of that process looks like. When I first clicked on the filters, I entered a +ideas email address in the “From” box.

Now you see my options. I can have it archived right away (which is fine since I’d probably be accessing them as a group) or star it, forward it…even delete it (in case you want to give out google+spam@gmail.com to sketchy sites that require an e-mail address). However, I chose to have it a) marked as read so I don’t worry about it and b) I chose to apply the label “Idea.” Whenever I want now, I can access all my post ideas simply by going to the Idea label. And I can delete the ones I’ve used.

Why do I like the Gmail system? Because you can do it from your e-mail, which I have open most of the time. I’d suggest scheduling a time during the day to collect all your ideas and e-mail them to yourself. Maybe before going to bed? When you change into your PJs and empty your pockets? Or perhaps when you’ve gotten home from work, you transfer them from your PDA.

Using Sandy to Store Ideas or Schedule Them

Now, you can always use Google’s Calendar to schedule your stored ideas, but I prefer a friendly little assistant named “Sandy.” Sandy is someone (ok, a program) I can e-mail to schedule anything I want, including blog posts. She’ll also store blog posts like Gmail, so stay tuned for that.

Here’s how to get Sandy to remind you of something:

After you’ve signed up with Sandy and gotten a special e-mail address (to contact her) and whatnot, you simply send her an e-mail in a format she, being a non-sentient program, can understand.

For example, here’s an e-mail I’d send to get her to remind me to write this post on Thursday 06/19/08 at 7:35pm.

Subject line: – [I don't use a subject line with her, I suppose one might send the message in the subject]

Remind me to write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized on
06/19/08 at 19:35.

There are a number of commands she’ll understand. I could have said “7:35 pm.” I could have said “in 3 hours” or in “135 hours.” I could have put just 6/19 as the date. Sandy’s homepage has all kinds of information that you can use and lots of examples.

With my settings, an e-mail would have popped into my inbox at 7:20 (giving me 15 minutes to get anything else out of the way) with the subject line “REMINDER: Write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized (7:35pm).”

So I can set myself up to write about a post days, weeks ahead of time and then forget all about it until the time comes. I could go through my list of ideas from Gmail and schedule myself for one writing session a day, if I wanted. Or I could send myself a reminder to go in there and pick my favorite.

Now for all of you who need a place to store your info. You can always e-mail it to yourself and stick it in a folder manually. But you can also e-mail Sandy and have her add it to your to-do list.

I’d just change it to “Write guest post for Frugal Dad on being organized @todo.” You can find all your to-dos by logging in to the main Sandy site and going to your to-do list page.
They’re deletable, if you want to when you finish the post. And you can e-mail Sandy directly from the site to schedule events…so you don’t even have to visit your e-mail account.

Sandy is also apparently compatible with texting and twitter, I just haven’t used those yet.

Wrapping Up

I hope this hasn’t sounded overly complicated. It’s quite simple really. I switch to my Gmail tab and e-mail ideas to myself. At some point I send a bunch of scheduling e-mails to Sandy. Then when they show up in my inbox, I write the post. And while I still forget some good ideas because I never wrote them down in the first place, this helps me keep a lot more of the good ones.

My Money Blog has also written about Sandy and has some suggestions for using her with another program called Jott. But that’s a whole different post.

A “virtual” friend of mine, Brad, has decided to take the blogging plunge and started up his own blog at EnemyofDebt.com (that’s right, the enemy of my enemy is my friend). He recently asked for some advice on writing for the web and I asked him if I could answer here to share some ideas with my readers, since many of you also write online. I hope you will take some time to visit Brad and say hello after reading today’s post. Without further ado, here are my suggestions on how to produce better copy when writing online.

Use Headings Wisely

One of the toughest things to do when writing is to separate ideas into logical groups. In books, or other forms of offline media, these logical groupings easily become separate paragraphs, sections, or entire chapters. As an online writer you don’t have the luxury of breaking up thoughts into separate “chapters,” so the best way to group different sets of ideas is to use headings. A header wrapped inside an “h3″ HTML tag works well in terms of size and search engine compatibility, but any font/size combination that separates your normal text will work.

Be Bold

Online readers have short attention spans. Are you still with me? Good. Highlight important thoughts, or main topics in each paragraph with a bold phrase or sentence. Readers should be able to scan only your bold text and get a pretty good idea what your post is about, without having to read each line, word for word.

Use Lists to Avoid Large Blocks of Text

My list posts have been some of the most popular ones here at Frugal Dad. People like lists, especially people reading online blogs in your niche. Lists are easy to digest, and easy to refer back to later. Of course, there is no way to track such statistics, but I would guess list posts get printed to hardcopy, and emailed around to friends, more than any other type of online article. I’ll pause here while you print this one. On second thought, just bookmark it and save a tree (after all, this is the Frugal Dad).

photo by: DeclanTM

Graphics Help Draw Attention

How does that saying go? A picture is worth a thousand visitors. I think I may be a little off, but you get the idea. Studies have shown that appealing graphics draw attention from readers’ eyes, so use them to your advantage. I frequently use horizontal pictures near the top of my posts to separate individual postings when listed together on the blog’s home page. Other bloggers do a great job of using graphics throughout the post to pull reader’s eyes down through the article (My Super-Charged Life is one of the better examples I’ve seen). Flickr’s creative commons section is a great resource for web graphics. Be sure to give a proper attribution/credit for the photo used, in accordance with Flickr’s policy.

Throw in the Occasional Series

Building anticipation is great for building readership as people are more likely to subscribe with the promise of something to look forward to. I probably don’t write in series often enough here at Frugal Dad, but plan to introduce a couple new series in the near future. Series posts are fun for readers to follow, and make topic generation an easier task for bloggers in the short term.

K.I.S.S Principle – Keep It Short, Stupid

I admit that I occasionally fire up my RSS reader and visit a blog to find a 2,000 word post with no headings, graphics, or bold sections and simply move on. Sorry. I just simply don’t have the time to read these types of daily masterpieces that I cannot easily scan. Stick to your main points and move through them efficiently to attract the most readers. On that note, this post is looking a little long, so until next time.

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