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.

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

In my last series post I discussed various techniques for curing writer’s block (or “blogger’s block,” as some call it). Each of those methods will generate some interesting ideas, but what happens when inspiration comes out of nowhere? Unfortunately, inspiration usually hits at a most inconvenient time. When an idea for a new post strikes I am usually away from a computer and I never seem to have a pad and pen handy to record the idea. When I get back to a computer I usually struggle to recall the idea, or the key points I planned to discuss. I have discovered a quick way to utilize modern technology to help in this regard, without spending a few hundred dollars on a PDA or Blackberry.

Your Cell Phone is Your Friend

One of the best, and most underutilized, features of today’s cell phones is the voice recorder. A quick search of the “Tools” menu on my phone reveals a “Recorder” option where I can speak a quick message into the phone’s microphone. Other models have a shortcut button on the outside of the phone similar to a camera phone’s camera-enabling button. If I am out and about and inspiration for an article pops into my head I’ll open my camera’s voice recording feature and give a quick summary of the idea.

Last week my mind was on the Nintendo Wii after reading an article about the new Wii Fit application coming out soon. “I want a Nintendo Wii. Delayed gratification, sleep on it, start a targeted savings account.” In less than 20 seconds I now had a topic idea recorded and three major discussion points. The next time I am around the computer I’ll add the article idea to my article bank in a fashion similar to the blog posting workflow Darren describes at ProBlogger.

Low-tech Options

There are obviously some low-tech options to consider. Some bloggers carry an idea notebook which could be as simple as a pad and pen tucked away in a back pocket. Others simply keep a folded sheet of paper with them at all times to record ideas and then transfer over to an electronic medium in the evenings. I personally find the cell phone voice recorder works best for me for the following reasons:

• I am less likely to lose my cell phone than a sheet of paper
• I can talk faster than I can write (and the faster I write, the sloppier my handwriting)
• It is not always convenient to write down a note, but talking on the phone is pretty well accepted as a socially acceptable activity

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

There comes a time in every writer’s career where he or she draws a total blank. Where inspiration is stopped dead in its tracks. Bloggers are not immune to this malady known as writer’s block, and in some ways we are more susceptible to it. The daily demands of cranking out new material make even the best blogger stay up late at night wondering if all the ideas spinning around in their head will one day simply dry up. Fear not! I have five proven ways to generate inspiration for articles. In fact, I used a couple of these to generate articles that appeared here on Frugal Dad just this past week.

Yahoo Has All the Answers

Well, not really. Yahoo does have a lot of questions, though. One of the best interactive features at the popular search portal is Yahoo!Answers. The idea is users sign up for a free Yahoo account and leave a question for other members. Those who submit questions review the answers and vote for the favorite. A point system was created to anoint power users, based on how many times they answered questions, and how many of those were voted as the “best answer.” How can Yahoo!Answers help you generate article ideas? By surfing the list of questions and answers related to your particular niche it is easy to see what people are interested to learn about. I recently saw a few questions asking about “credit card arbitrage.” People were curious to learn what it was, and if anyone was successful at it. It generated an article idea immediately and I was off to learn more about arbitrage myself.

Search Engine Query Results Are Your Friends

Most bloggers enjoy looking back through their site statistics to find out how people were referred to their site. I am no exception. It is often amusing to read the search terms people use to wind up at Frugal Dad. However, these logs are not just to be used for entertainment purposes. The real power from search engine query history is in helping us as writers determine what is popular at the moment, and what people are looking for on the internet. Armed with this knowledge we can begin to put together article ideas around those topics. This one recently worked for me as news of a possible economic stimulus package was being kicked around Washington. I started seeing some traffic on a tax related article with phrases like “is another tax rebate coming” and “will there be a 2008 economic stimulus package.” I quickly did some homework and published my own tax rebate story.

What Are Other People Writing About?

One of the greatest pages on any blog is the archives. Here you will find hundreds (sometimes thousands) of previously published articles on topics related to your niche. Look back at the previous month’s work - anything you could expand on? Anything you agree with or disagree with? Be sure to link back to their article and do your own homework, don’t just rip off their ideas. This technique also works well for your own blog. Look back at your own archives page for topics you could expand on, or plans you could update for your readers.

Listen to Talk Radio

Talk radio call-in shows can provide a ton of inspiration, particularly ones centered around your blog’s particular niche. I listen to The Dave Ramsey Show daily and frequently use a question from one his callers as the basis for an article. Even shows outside of your niche can generate ideas for peripheral topics. For instance, I was running an errand on Saturday morning and a local gardening show was on the radio. Someone called in to ask about square foot gardening. I had never heard of this concept, but was intrigued. I made a note to do some research when I got home. Weeks later, my How To Build a Square Foot Garden article is still by far the most popular article here at Frugal Dad.

Think Like a Blogger

Early in my writing career I read a great article at ProBlogger.net entitled “Learn to Think Like a Blogger.” The author wrote that one of the keys to coming up with ideas to write about was thinking like a blogger as you go about your every day life. When you start to think like a blogger you will find inspiration hits more and more frequently. One day I spotted some loose change in a parking lot and stopped to pick it up. A passerby made an interesting comment about my stopping to pick up money, and it motivated me to share the story with my readers.

Putting a combination of these tactics into practice on a regular basis may be the best preventive medicine available to avoid a case of writer’s block.

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

The following is part of Frugal Dad’s weekly series, “So You Want to Be a Blogger?” which chronicles the development and optimization of a blog’s lifecycle.

So where were we before that interruption caused by last week’s surge in traffic? Oh, that’s right. We had identified a topic, audience and registered our domain. Now it is time to select a hosting service to serve as the all important back end for our blog. Think of a host as the one that serves up all the content behind the pages of your blog. The following is a list of things to consider when selecting a host.

• Cost. Like anything else you can pay as much or as little for hosting depending on a variety of factors. Bandwidth, storage space, domains allowed, email accounts, and database features are all examples of the features offered by most typical blog hosting services.

• Bandwidth. The amount of bandwidth allowed by most hosts ranges from 3,000GB to 6,000GB monthly for beginner plans. Other hosts allow unlimited bandwidth for a higher price. Think of bandwidth as fuel in your car’s tank. Once you’ve used up all the gas your car can’t go any further. Same with your blog. Once you have maximized your monthly allocated bandwidth your host will not allow your blog to be accessed, and visitors will see an ugly message indicating your site has exceeded its bandwidth limits. It isn’t likely you will have to contend with this problem early on, but plan on having a little more than you think you will ever need to avoid any temporary interruption in your site’s uptime.

• Storage Space (disk space). Similar to bandwidth, storage space limits fluctuate depending on your selected plan. The more disk space you have the more files, pages, and emails you will be able to store on your host’s server.

After much deliberation I decided to go with HostGator, primarily because I knew someone hosting a blog there, and their introductory price was tough to beat. Setup was fairly intuitive with a one-click WordPress installation on the server. I downloaded a WordPress template and was up and blogging in less than an hour (from the time I received my account information from HostGator).

Be sure you understand the host’s backup plan, and create a backup schedule yourself to create a second layer of redundancy. I learned this lesson the hard way when I did something to corrupt my site’s files on the server. Now would be a good time to discourage messing around with template code, MySQL installations, etc. if you aren’t completely comfortable with what you are doing. Fortunately, my host backs up their servers once a week, so I was able to ask for a recovery back to their latest restore point. Unfortunately, I lost a few days of posts and template changes. Tip: Subscribe to your blog’s email subscription service and hang on to the emails. I was able to “recreate” my posts not included in the database restoration from my emailed articles.

Ask the Readers: Feel free to share your hosting experience in the comments section. I was hoping to include a list of hosts and some short reviews, but honestly I just don’t know that much about many of the other hosts out there.

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

The following is part of Frugal Dad’s weekly series, “So You Want to Be a Blogger?” which chronicles the development and optimization of a blog’s lifecycle.

One of the keys to being a successful blogger is flexibility. I had a post all planned out for today’s So You Want to Be a Blogger series, but as I mentioned yesterday Frugal Dad had an unexpected boost in traffic thanks to an article appearing on LifeHacker.org, and subsequently on the front page of del.icio.us, a popular social bookmarking site. Instead of pushing ahead with regularly scheduled programming I decided to postpone my planned post for next week, and instead share some lessons learned from yesterday’s boost in traffic.

Prepare for a surge in traffic before the tsunami hits. Quite honestly, yesterday’s surge in traffic came as a complete surprise. The article I wrote about square foot gardening was picked up by a fellow blogger and referenced in one her posts on the same subject. At some point it was identified as being worthy to appear on LifeHacker.com as a featured article, and 14,000 visitors later I’m sitting here in new-blogger shock. Consider only one in six blogs draws more than 500 page views a day! It was a fun ride, and I am thankful for the opportunities to meet several new people, and pickup many new subscribers. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a few things I could have done better to capitalize on the traffic.

• Have a standard “introductory” post ready to go. I scrambled to put together an introduction post welcoming the waves of new visitors, but wasn’t able to publish it until my lunch break, several hours after the initial reference from Life Hacker was published. The purpose of this introductory post is to capture the interest of some of this new traffic and attempt to pull them deeper into your blog. A link to your archives, a “best-of” section, or a popular series post is a good way to attract interest beyond the article the visitor landed on.

• Create a new campaign on Crazy Egg or Google Analytics to see where users are clicking. 10,000-hit days are uncommon for relatively new bloggers, and they provide an excellent opportunity for you to analyze what’s popular on your blog. Keep in mind that if the majority of this traffic has been referred from a social bookmarking site they may be on a stop-and-go pattern, pausing just long enough to read a few paragraphs from your article and then move on. For this reason, average page views or number of clicks per visitors may be misleading. Still, those that do click on a link on your blog will help you determine which sections of your content are most popular. This could be important down the road in terms of advertising, article promotion, etc.

• Promote subscriber options within the post. Be sure visitors know how to subscribe to your blog. A highly visible subscriber area near the top of your blog is a good start. If a particular article has drawn some extra attention make it even easier for new visitors to subscribe by placing a line near the end of your article with links to your RSS feed and/or email delivery signup page.

• Fortunately, my host held up to the traffic and I am not aware of any significant downtime. If you use Wordpress to maintain your blog, consider the wp-cache plugin to reduce the database round trips your server has to make to serve new visitors. Basically, this plug-in saves your pages in a static file which is available for a short time for new visitors. This makes your site run much more efficiently versus the normal request, database pull, code compile and display routine.

Normally a post like this would appear near the middle of a “how to become a blogger” series, but I wanted to share my experience with you while the lessons were fresh. Hopefully, if you experience a wave of traffic early in your blogging journey you will now be better prepared to handle it.

Blogging is a rewarding experience. It provides a creative outlet for those with an interest to share their thoughts and ideas with others. It can develop into another income stream which could add to your “snowflakes.” Best of all, you will build relationships with some fantastic people along the way. If you are one of those new subscribers who landed here yesterday, welcome. Thanks for joining us!

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