Blogging is More Than Formulas

I’ve spent years reading, studying, and writing blogs to fit formulas in search of the golden ticket. And I’ve recently had my cathartic moment of truth when I realized my bloglife had to change.

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Freelance Writing Struggles

Sometimes it feels like finding freelance writing gigs is a full time job on its own. I have these grand dreams of having enough gigs to make this writing my full time occupation. I know it will be a long road. I know I will have to keep applying and making a name for myself. I know I can’t give up or “take a break” or it will just take longer. There are weeks where I spend more time on the search than I do actually working on content.

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Creativity vs Revenue

Writing fiction has been my life time goal. For a while that is all I worked on. Every night I would come home and spend hours working on my latest fiction pieces. That was my focus. That was all that mattered to me for the longest time. Then I started writing articles, and I had some success. It was nice to have the extra money coming in.

After the novel and the novella were done, I started gaining more interest on blogging, writing articles, and generating other content. I figured it would be nice to have a little side business. I could generate a little “fun money” while I wrote my fiction pieces. It was win/win. Even the non-paying jobs were getting me some nice attention and helping me create a presence on the internet.

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Why I Don’t Blog Much Anymore

While random people arriving here after a Google search don’t know me from Adam, I have a few friends and family members who note that they stopped reading CultureFeast.com because I no longer contribute on any regular basis. They don’t really care if what I write is relevant, so long as I write. As sweet as that is, I still don’t want to write.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say. Trust me, that won’t happen anytime soon. Rather, it’s more a combination of freakishly busy and paranoid that keeps me from weekly blogging. Busy is not something I can change. But there are way around paranoid… namely, the super secret blog or two.

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Blogging and Social Media Reshaped My Work

If you were to have told me, about a year ago, that I would be using social media on a regular basis, I would have thought you were insane. To me, social media was nothing more than Facebook and MySpace, nothing more, nothing less. I thought that blogging was just for nerds and people with just too much time on their hands. However, after one of my PR courses (Strategies and Issues), I found myself slowly getting used to using, and understanding exactly what social media and blogging were. The course was very social media heavy; understanding the use of blogs and social media sites, how to effectively use social media today, and about half way through the course, each student had to create his and her own blog.

At first, I could not be bothered, and my friend Dara and I would just roll our eyes with sheer boredom. As she became less and less interested in the class, I became more fixated on blogging and the Internet. I was one of the very few students who updated their blogs more than once a week because I was genuinely interested in what I was writing about (Public Relations and Popular Culture).

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Chris Smith Speaks on SEO for Bloggers

Christ Smith has just taken the stage. We will begin coverage immediately. Please refresh this page to see more coverage as it unfolds. 

Chris Smith specializes in local optimization. He contributes to SearchEngineLand.com and WebProNews.com. 

Optimizing Your Blog

Beef up your internal hierarchical linking structure (more…)

Dallas WordCamp is Coming Soon!

Mark your calendars. If you are a WordPress junkie and you live anywhere near the Dallas/Fort Worth area, you better be in Frisco on March 29th and 30th for our very own WordCamp. "The largest gathering of WordPress bloggers, podcasters, designers, programmers, and aficionados that Big D has ever seen." 

Saturday will focus on general user topics. Sunday's focus will be mostly developer topics. Did I mention it's only $20 to attend?!?!? Coffee, snacks, and lunch will be provided both days. Register now and you'll get a WordCamp t-shirt as well. (more…)