5 Ways to Avoid Writers Block
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies
But often coming up with ideas about what to write about is difficult. It’s not unlike the novel writer who has started a book but then sits down at their computer and then can’t think of a thing to say.
Welcome to the world of “writer’s block”. We all have it from time to time and while it might be difficult to get those wheels turning in your mind as to what to say, here are some tips to keep those wheels well-oiled:
1. Visit blogs that talk about your topic. Oftentimes you’ll find a topic on another blog that you hadn’t considered yourself. Take a look through their archives and see which topics are getting the most discussion. Jot down some ideas that you think may be interesting to your own readers and then use that as a springboard for your own ideas.
2. Check your email. You likely subscribe to other people’s newsletters within your industry. What kinds of information are they sending you? Are you interested in that information as well? If so, it’s likely your readers are too.
3. Visit Google. Visit Google and do a search for one of your keywords then take a look at the links that show up on the left hand side of the page. Here you will have the option of searching blogs, videos, and discussions on the term you searched on. Visit each of these to see if you can’t get a spark going as to what you can write about.
4. Visit your RSS Reader. Many people use RSS readers which help them to keep up to date on what other people are discussing online. A quick visit to your own RSS reader will give you a wide array of ideas that you can use on your own site.
5. Visit Article Directories. Most article directories have a section that showcases the most published articles within a certain area of expertise. Find out which of these articles have been published the most and then write your own take on that topic for your own site or newsletter. This is usually a great indication of what is popular right now.
Writer’s block affects everyone. But thankfully the Internet has provided us with a vast amount of resources that can help us break out of our slump by simply doing a little bit of investigation ourselves.
Convert Your Website to Mobile and Make it Mobile Friendly
It is estimated that by the end of 2012, 23% of the population will be using Smartphones and those users will expect the websites they visit to be mobile friendly, easy to read and easy to use.
If you’re one of those who has yet to convert your website over to a user-friendly format, I’ve got some good news for you. It’s very easy with just a few clicks of your mouse or even an install of a of a WordPress plugin can instantly make your website mobile friendly.
First, let’s take a look at some WordPress plugins for just this purpose:
One of my favorites is WPTouch.
- You don’t have to do anything fancy to your blog in order for it to work.
- Works on iPhones, iPod Touches, Androids, Palm and BlackBerry OS6 devices.
- You can customize the appearance.
- It won’t affect the way your site currently looks.
There are also:
If you want to turn your static website into a mobile friendly site, there’s a little bit of work involved but probably not as much as you might think.
As a matter of fact, Google offers a lot of help in this process. They offer a free “10 Mobile Site Best Practices“, and offer a complete step by step process to creating your very own mobile site here. If you’re curious as to what your current site looks like right now to a mobile phone user, use this testing tool.
There is no doubt that as a society, we are all moving towards becoming a far more mobile society. And it’s more important than ever to make sure that you’re getting traffic from all possible angles.
Getting too many “guru” emails?
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Products, Marketing, Productivity
Here’s a few tips that I thought you too might be interested in, especially if you tend to subscribe to a 
lot of online marketer’s email lists like I do. First off, I am subscribed to dozens of other marketers lists mainly because I want to keep tabs on what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, what’s being promoted, and so on (let me tell you, it’s not easy). Some of the products I see pitched are wonderful, many border on spam and still others can even be classified as downright unethical.
Regardless of why you’re on someone’s list you might find it helpful to organize those emails because, if you’ve ever subscribed to even one popular marketer’s list, chances are you’re getting an email every other day – sometimes multiple times a day (one marketer in particular comes to my mind). Here’s what to do to get a handle on all of these emails.
- Use a Gmail account that is only for the specific purpose of these emails. It helps so much to have this separate email address! I learned this the hard way when years ago I had set up a Gmail account (when Gmail was brand-spanking new) and started to subscribe to many lists. Before I knew it, I had dozens of emails hitting my inbox each day, which eventually grew to the thousands because I simply couldn’t read all of them.What I did (and may what work for you too) is instead of having to go through and unsubscribe to these lists (which I still need for research), I instead created a new Gmail account that is specifically for business purposes only and kept the original one.I then created categories for all of these lists so that whenever these promotions hit my inbox, they automatically head into a folder. (See the next point):
- Categorize these emails and then set a rule within Gmail to instantly place each sender into a specific folder.Under the “settings” within Gmail, there is a tab entitled “Labels”. You can set up as many labels as you want to. Once you’ve done that, and you’ve started to receive emails from the lists you’ve signed up at, you can select the individual email and then choose “Label” from the drop-down list to label so that the sender gets placed under that label. You can also set up rules by clicking on an email, choosing “more” and then “Filter messages like these”. This way, each time that sender sends off an email, they’ll automatically get filtered for you.
- Finally, I received a great tip from Matt Cutts head of Google’s Webspam team. I at one time had so many emails that were just sitting there that I wanted to move out of the way, but I didn’t want to delete them so I followed Matt’s advice.First, select all of the emails in your inbox, and then create a new label such as “Last Years Emails” or “Old Inbox”. Finally, click the “archive” link – this will move all of your emails to the “oldinbox” and you can start fresh (well, sort of) but it at least gives you a clean slate to begin with.
