I haven’t spread link love in a few weeks. The following links were my food for thought this week when I finally managed to catch up (somewhat) with my RSS feeder.

The Renegade Writer has two posts that had me going ‘hmmm’ for a couple of reasons.

The freelancer’s guide to getting paid reminded me of my unpaid invoice. 

5 Tips for creating an inspiring workspace got me thinking of ways I can set up my own corner. Right now, there’s a stack of books, papers, a phone and a lamp. I’ll post a pic up soon, and you’ll see that decorating skills are absent in me

Over at Freelance Folder, Laura Spencer shed light on the uncomfortable facts about plagiarism. Thankfully, I’m nowhere near being a popular enough blogger to be plagiarized. I agree that blogging success has nothing to do with plagiarism but I do believe that it reduces the chances of having your writing stolen.

Sean has the second place in my list of bloggers who I read religiously. As in every post and every word written by them that I come across. And my list is only 4 people long. His post, An exclamation point is like a promise made me stop and think about my own use of the exclamation mark. Do you use it too often? 

If you’re struggling with blogging (and the best of us do) head over to Confident Writing where Joanna tells us about 10 Things to do when you lose your blogging voice. 

What have you been reading online lately?

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My vacation meant that my Google Reader had more than 1000 items collected for my reading, uhh… pleasure. I’m only just beginning to catch up on all my favourite blogs. It doesn’t help of course that they post so regularly!

This week, I’ll be linking to Copyblogger’s posts that I read word for word after coming back.

• Three Steps That Guarantee Every word of Your Copy Gets Read
• The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines
• Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break
• Two Ways to Say More With Fewer Words
• How to Be a Better Writer in the Next 10 Minutes

Those are five posts I’ve read every word of. Now if I can just use the information in them practically to become a better writer and blogger. That’s the toughest part. There’s so much information at the tip of our fingers that we leave the advice we just read in favour of reading some more.

I’ve rarely been able to put what I’ve learned into practice. Is it the same with you guys? Or am I the only failure?

Technorati Tags: Blogging, link love, Writing

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This Sunday, instead of linking to a number of posts, I’m linking to a report by Chris Guillebeau.

279 Days To Overnight Success is for writers, bloggers and other online artists looking to succeed in their online ventures.

On a side note, I love the layout of the website!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, link love, Writing

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Guest posting is a great way to gain exposure for yourself and your blog. It’s also stamp of approval from the blogger on who’s blog you’re posting. The readers of that blog trust you by proxy. You don’t have to work hard on proving your mettle.

If you’re already successful, guest posting is a great way to reach out to new audiences and establish your expertise.

This week, we’re going round up guests post on popular blogs.

- Write to Done is Leo Babauta’s (of Zen Habits fame) writing based blog. Marco Saric of How To Make My Blog wrote a guest post ‘How to Make Your Site go Viral on Twitter‘. That’s a pretty huge pat on the back. Leo has a huge following and if not many, Marco most definitely managed to gain some loyal readers through this post. Not to mention, he added a feather in his blogging cap. 

- Chris Brogan’s blog has over 21 thousand subscribers. Theses are just the RSS subscribers. On an estimate, add a few thousand more email and newsletter subscribers and that’s a staggering number to reach out to through a guest post. Jason Alba’s guest post “Handling Negative Comments on Your Blog Post“. The post received 52 comments and 6 track-backs. That is some serious exposure!

- A quick look at Shanon Paul’s Very Official Blog revealed that on an average, her posts receive 7-8 17 comments. That’s an decent awesome level of participation if you ask me. But it’s far from the big leagues. Her guest post “Six Very Official Ways to Improve Your Writing” for Pro Blogger was great exposure. 

Shannon’s been busy establishing a solid reputation for herself instead of concentrating on building a blog following. She’s been successful in it to a great extent as she got a mention by Chris Brogan in 8 Marketing Bloggers to Watch in 2009.

- Daily Blog Tips is one of Daniel Scocco’s babies. Daniel was one of the unfortunate bloggers who’s website got hacked. The incident raised a lot of security questions among bloggers. Mr I from Blogging With Success decided to expand on Daniel’s post about website security by listing 5 Plugins to keep WordPress Safe.

- Jonathan Muller’s guest post “How To Become a Better Blogger” for Yan Susanto’s Thou Shall Blog was very well received. Even though Jonathan’s blog hasn’t been updated since early February, it still has a lot of useful information for you to go through.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, guest posting, link love, Writing

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You know how everyone says blogging requires passion? Well that’s not the only thing blogging requires. I’ll be expanding on this thought sometime later. For now, here are the links for your reading pleasure for this week.

The Writing Journey came back around the end of March writing about blogging. Bob tells us The Number One Rule of Blogging  and then went to takes on Copy Blogger. Nah – nothing that scandlous. Don’t Blog If You Suck At Writing disagrees with a guest post on copy blogger about how to be a successful blogger if you can’t write. Both sides raise valid points. Whichever side you agree with will largely depend on your experience of blogging

Daily Blogging Tips answered a question about blog commenting. Daniel responded with a detailed answer. Interesting read: When Do You Stop Commenting on Other Blogs?

Blogging without the blog went Smashing The Myths About Blogging for its two year anniversary. Barbara got it right on all counts. If there are other myths that you discoevered, do tell!

Blogopolis BluePrint is my new favourite blog. Apart from the usual content, Eric and Sean do videos – which is nothing new. But their videos are conversations. They’re two guys talking business and having a ball discussing their favourite topics. Doesn’t get better than that. In this video, they’re talking about The Highs and Lows of Blogging.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, commenting, link love, Writing

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Every freelance is the new fish in the pond at some point. We all go through the first few rocky months and confusions of setting our rates, how to deal with clients, and the worst – getting paid.

This week I’m posting a few excellent resources for the two. In the coming weeks I’ll be doing a post on freelancers who are pure gold in terms of helping other freelancers out.

Freelance Switch has done an overview of How To Set Your Freelance Rates.

My favourite trio who fell in love with a girl and broke their pact to each other, posted The Last Ditch Letter That Might Help You Get Paid. The men have used it twice themselves and according to them, they got paid both times!

They also discuss The Big Secret No One Talks About. Yeah, you guessed it. Freelancer rates.

Chris Bibey of Freelance Writing talks about  Managing Invoices and Payments as a Freelance Writer.

Before you accept a Freelance Writing Job, its important to do these four things to save you future problems.

Got any posts you came across related to setting your rates and getting paid? Do share!

Technorati Tags: Freelancing, freelancing rates, link love

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Since I’ve just completed a series on Twitter, it is only logical to do a round up of twitter related blog posts I found useful. Or not.

• The Best Article Everyday is a site that updates everyday with an article it deems best of the day. They chose PC Mag’s post “Top 10 Twitter Tips For Beginners” a few days ago. On a side note, Best Article Every Day is using the new WordPress theme released by Smashing Magazine a few days ago. Looks neat!

• Confident Writing stays true to its theme and talks about “How Twitter Can Help You Write With Confidence“.

• There are manners to be minded and etiquettes to be followed in any social setting. Twitter is no different. Beyond the Rhetoric lists the “Top 10 Rules of Twitter Etiquette“. How many of these do you follow? BTR only lists 5 rules. Find the rest of rules at Design is Philosophy.

• Word Count comes to the rescue of all twitter newbies (and the not so newbies) and lets them know that “There is No Such Thing as a Dumb Twitter Question“. Phew! That’s good to know!

• All Freelance Writing wonders, “Is Immediacy (Re twitter and Blogging) a Good Thing for Writers?”

• While we’re still learning the ropes of Twitter, Problogger is telling the Secret to Writing Posts That Go Viral on Twitter. Which is why he’s the guru and we’re the minions.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Twitter, Twitter Tools

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If you’ve read even a single article on how to increase blog traffic or make a post search engine friendly, then you must know how every one says blog posts with lists are one great way to do it.

Every one does them. Me too, only I’m obviously doing something wrong. Because even though my search engine results have spiked, blog participation is a bit fat zero. This week, it’s time to share the love with list posts.

1. 49 Tips to Become a Better Blogger
2. Zen Blogging – 5 Benefits to Getting Started
3. Top 100 Books for Freelance Writers
4. The Top 30 Blogs on Writing
5. 3 Easy Ways to Write With Style
6. 100 Freelancer Writers You Can Outsource Your Blog Content To – I’m at number 26! (muhaha! =P)

And keeping tune with this week’s theme, I’ve numbered the links too!

Technorati Tags: link love, List posts

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Another week is at an end and it’s been excellent so far. Somebody decided to give The Base a boost by stumbling a post Thank you, whoever you are.

This week I’ll be posting links to better customize your blogger blog through widgets and other ways.

• ‘What Would Seth Godin Do’ is a great WordPress plug in. What’s even more great about it is that there is a blogger version of WWSGD too – which I installed today. What does it do? WWSGD monitors your cookies and lets you put up a welcome message. And not just a welcome message, it lets you set up separate welcome messages for new and returning users. How cool is that?

• On my WordPress blog, I use the Sociofluid plug-in for social bookmarking options on every post. Even though it has a blogger version, I couldn’t figure out how to put the icons in every post. The widget was putting the icons on my blog but not in separate posts. So a search led me to Blogger Plug-ins where I found my perfect answer.

• The past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about removing adsense ads from the blog (homepage) and adding them to my posts. Since I’m a novice in all things designing and customizing, I had no idea how to do it. Even though I haven’t yet made the decision of adding ads in my posts, I found my answer in How to add Adsense inside single posts only. It’s not a widget but it’s definitely worth knowing.

• A lot of WordPress blogs have tabbed navigation in their blogs. It saves sidebar space, makes for easy navigation and looks very professional. Blogger Buster has a tutorial on how to add tabbed sidebar navigation in your blogger blog.

• While it’s easy to optimise WordPress blogs for SEO through plug-ins, Blogger blogs have no such widgets to help. Reading SEO Tricks in Blogger Blogs and Blogspot and SEO takes care of this drawback to a great extent.

If you have a Blogger blog, and keep thinking that it’s very limiting, you might want to reconsider that after reading these. I know I am! Hope this week’s themed links help you as much as they have helped me!

Technorati Tags: Blogger, Blogger widgets, Wordpress

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Clients are on everyone’s minds these days. Or maybe they’re just on mine. For this week’s link love, I’ll be highlighting blog posts that cover various aspects of our work’s lifeblood: Clients.

Freelance Folder had an excellent open thread post. Mason asked ‘Where Do You Get Your Clients?‘ He narrowed it down to three questions that his readers answered in the comments. If you’re looking for ways to find new clients, the comments on this post is a good place to look.

Freelance Switch posted ‘6 Ways to Follow-up With Prospects Without Being Creepy’. If you’re wondering when or how to contact a client you had initial talks with but haven’t heard back from, this post is your answer.

Another blog post from Freelance Switch outlines time-tested sales techniques to win clients.

The Wealthy Freelancer listed ‘4 Simple Rules for Getting More Repeat Business & Referrals’. Returning clients or recommendations are the best way to grow your business. A testimonial from one client is worth more than payments from five when you’re looking to expand your work.

Chrisblogging has a trio of blog posts related to clients that I found helpful.

• Three Times to Ask Clients for More Work
• Don’t Shy Away From Small Clients
• How to Rid of a Freelance Writing Clients

Cedric from Your Article Resource shares (not so secret) Secrets to Keep Your Freelance Clients Happy.

To wrap up the topic of clients, Jennifer Mattern from All Freelance Writing shares a client-from-hell story. Reading ‘Dealing With Abuse as a Freelance Writer’ is important for every freelancer. While some of us are lucky to have great clients, it is only a matter of time before we come across a bad client.

Technorati Tags: Clients, Freelance, Freelancing

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