Blogging is serious business. Whoever said blogging is fun didn’t know what they were talking about. Blogging is a seriously fun business

Studying Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging course is fun too. No mincing of words and no false promises. What else could I want? A paid blogging job perhaps? All in good time my friend.

Unit III of the Staff Blogging Course deals with applying for a job. Ali gives tip regarding your blogging job application. What to do, what not to do, how to stay in the blog editor’s notice and lists sample application and guest posting guidelines from various blogs.

The Staff Blogging Course also tells you

• Next steps for the three different application methods discussed in Unit II
• What to do if/when rejected for a blogging job you applied to
• How to form and maintain your portfolio and
• How to keep track of job applications

The course handouts include sample job applications that Ali herself have used and has also added footnotes with further details. There’s also a sample Excel file that helps you track your applications and submissions.

This Unit includes three simple exercises that won’t take much time if you’ve done the exercises in the previous units. Follow this unit, and who knows? By next week you just may have a staff blogging job!

Using the sample excel sheet

The Excel sheet keeps pushing me to apply to new places. I’ve added a new sheet to the file where I’ve listed the blogs I’d like to staff blog for and keep adding blog post ideas related to them as they come to me.

The best part about staff blogging jobs is that they open up every few months. So even if the blog in question isn’t looking for a staff blogger now, there’s no guarantee that they won’t want one four months from now.

If you like what you’ve seen of the staff blogging course so far, you can buy the course for $19 here.

Today, Michael Martine (Remarkablogger) answers my question about what we as bloggers, can do to hold the interest of our readers.

Michael is a blog consultant and coach who’s the brain behind a lot of things. The most impressive of which (for me) is WordPress SEO Secrets.

I asked Michael the vaguest question in the world and he came back with the most specific answer I could have asked for. Thank you for your time and insight Michael. You’re awesome!

What is the one thing people should change about their approach to become more interesting (to their target audience)?

Michael: The one thing people should change in their approach to become more interesting is the “voice” of their writing. Interesting writing is full of personality and the voice of the writer is unmistakable in it. Inject your personality into your writing voice.

When we write, we often write in a voice that isn’t natural to us. It’s forced. We think we have to sound a certain way, that we have to sound “professional” or “business-like.” That is complete bullshit. You must sound like YOU. Write how you talk. Write like you’re writing an email to your best friend. That doesn’t mean your spelling and grammar can suck, but even those are secondary to personality. Do this and your writing will instantly be more interesting.

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To learn more about blogging from Michael, check out the series of posts he did at Remarkablogger on how to write for your blog.

• No More Rambling Brain Splats
• Quit Qualifying Your Words and Just Say it Already!
• Don’t Get Mad – Get Persuasive
• Separate Fact from Fiction in Your Blog Writing
• Simple doesn’t mean Stupid or How to Write So Anyone Can Understand You

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Freelancing, Social Networking

If you’re still running around like a headless chicken wondering why your blog isn’t making you money, let me clue you in: It’s because you’re going about it the wrong way!

Not your fault really, seeing how you’re headless

As a former headless chicken, I would advise you to sit in one place and read this review to find out how you can change your luck and go from earning zero to paying your bills in less than a year. (Not my story. Ali’s. Mine will come after I’ve completed the course.)

Unit II of the staff blogging course deals with finding your first staff blogging job.

In this unit, Ali explains:

• Different methods of finding staff blogging jobs,
• Tips on increasing your chances of landing the jobs and
• Lists job boards where you can search for blogging jobs.

Exercises

As with the previous unit, there are exercises included that guarantee success if done properly. What stood out for me was that there is a very realistic time frame included for each exercise.

You can of course, take longer but the time limit provided in the exercises is more than enough if you’re focusing on the course alone.

Handouts

Not only does the “Finding your first staff blogging job” come with a separate handout listing the reputable job boards with well paying staff blogging jobs, but it also has another hand out in which Ali has included emails as samples that she sent to blog editors herself when applying for a job.

Each email is explained, with every important aspect of it highlighted so that the reader understands why something was written in a certain way and what effect it would have on your application.

Included in the handout are a few more personal messages that give you a clear idea of how to approach a blog a  job. It’s not all about success in the handout though. Ali also list things that did not work for her.

My view and experience

I’ve started checking the listed job boards daily and applying to jobs that I feel I’m a fit for. I used Ali’s sample email to modify my own application email before applying. While my first few applications were rejection, there are a couple worth mentioning.

My very first application for a travelling blog was rejected because my geographical location was not what they were looking for. Since they had not specified a location in the job ad, they apologized, and mentioned that they were impressed by my samples and would keep me in mind if something came up. Much better than a ‘Thanks but no thanks.’ don’t you think?

Another application replied with a ‘We’d love to have you blog for us. Please tell us your rates.” I sent them my rates and never heard back from them. Keeping an eye on their blog revealed that they had hired someone else. Before you ask? No, my rates were not high.

A follow up email elicited no response.

Success!

All right, so not in getting a staff blogging job – though I’m hopeful that might change soon – but in getting work offer through one of the methods Ali suggests and explains in the unit. Keep your mind open for not just staff blogging jobs, you can apply for other jobs with the help of the things you learn.

The fact that following Ali’s advice is eliciting response is success in itself. With every application, I’m getting more confident and realizing that I have more experience that I give myself credit for. All those years of blogging have given me mad skills!

You already know what I’ll say, but I’ll say it anyway. Do yourselves a favour and buy the staff blogging course. You’ll be making money from blogging within three months. If you don’t (provided you’ve done every exercise in the course) there’s a 90 day money back guarantee.

What are you waiting for? It’s $19! Or less if you have a discount code.

Image credit: Andyp UK

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Freelancing, Staff Blogging, Writing

If you’ve ever posted any content online, you know spam.

It’s like the neighbour who wouldn’t stop coming over to ‘borrow’ something or the other. You politely tried to dissuade her, gently but firmly told her no, talked to her about how annoying it is when people ask for things continuously and never return them or the favour back but nothing worked. So you trained your kids to always be  on the lookout for Mrs Can-I-borrow-it-forever from next door.

You even tried to hide in your own home and pretend you weren’t there.

The neighbour still comes over and you still get spam.

Until one day it all mysteriously stopped. The neighbour stopped coming and you could opened the kitchen window and allowed your kids to play in the garden.

A few weeks ago, spam stopped coming in completely. I went from receiving over 200 spam comments a day to zilch. Zero. Nada.

Then I got one spam comment. I pounced on my spam folder sure that it was genuine comment caught up by mistake. At first look it did seem like it. The comment said: 

I was ready to pump my fist in the air for catching an authentic comment in my spam folder when I noticed which post they’d left the comment in. That can’t be right. The person in question had been wondering about the issue of keeping my zen seat warm.

I checked the email and the domain looked fishy. So I let it remain in the folder to see if it was genuine or more of the same would follow.

A few days later, another comment got caught by Akismet. This one seemingly innocent with a request to copy the post to his website. It had google.com as its website and the post it question?

Yeah, you guessed it. Why spammers are so interested in my seat of zen is beyond me. It’s in my loo for heaven’s sake you dumb bots! I would flush each one of you down given half the chance.

Finally I got another comment caught in spam. 

Thanks, I love my theme too. I would also tell you where I downloaded it from if your website and email address didn’t promise the enlargement of a part of human anatomy that I don’t even have.

So got any smart s-p-a-m lately or am I the sole recipient of their newfound intelligence?

Photo credit: cursedthing

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Spam

Earning money through blogging is every blogger’s dream. Too bad you can’t make money from your own blog – unless you’re Darren Rowse aka blogger extraordinaire.

Now that I’ve depressed you, I’ll tell you about an alternate way where you can make money… just not from your own blog. I’m talking about Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging Course. 

I bought Ali’s Staff Blogging Course last month when I read her interview at Daily Blog Tips for three reasons.

1. Her story is mine – and very possibly yours. [*cough* blog failure *cough*]
2. Ali’s way of earning money from blogging is believable, doable and involves no shortcuts.
3. The price of the course. $19! 

So I bought the course, poured through it, learned countless things and started implementing it.

As I go through the course and do the tasks, I’ll be reviewing it at The Base unit by unit.

Unit One:

The Staff Blogging Course is divided into five units. In the first unit, ‘The Basics of Blogging’, Ali tells us about her own blogging failure and answers the following questions related to staff blogging.

• What exactly is staff blogging? 
• How much can I expect to earn?
• Do I need to have my own blog?  
• Do I have to be a good writer? 
• How do I know if staff blogging is for me?

Question two was the one I was most interested in, but Ali had excellent information and advice in all of the answers which I couldn’t skip or ignore.

Resources, Handout and Exercises

Not only does Ali explains everything, she lists examples and resources. She also provides handouts and exercises to carry out.

The Goals Sheet in Unit One was an eye opener. She tells you exactly what to do with the handout and urges the reader to ‘be brutally honest’ with the answers. Remember, no one else is going to see them so you might as well do as she’s saying. After all, Ali knows her stuff.

My view of Unit One

Filling out that goals sheet suddenly made my blogging goals tangible. Achievable. 

It gave me a clear sense of direction and I now know where to go and what to do to reach my goals. 

I printed out the resources Ali linked to and pined up my goals sheet. It reminds me of what I have to work towards as I sit down to work on my desk every day.

The act of filling out the sheet gives a clear sense of direction and accomplishment. I got the tough work done, now I just need to connect the dots as I proceed with the course. Remeber, the Staff Blogging Course offers no short cuts. Instead it shows you a way that is guaranteed to work if you put the required effort into it.

Stay tuned for my review of Unit II of the Staff Blogging Course next week!

Already convinced? Buy the Staff Blogging Course today. Share your view if you’ve already bought the course.

Disclosure: The staff blogging course hyperlinks are all affiliate links.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Freelancing, Staff Blogging, Writing