New contact form for this blog
A new feature on this blog for my readers is a Contact Form.
This will now be a constant feature on the side bar under the Contents heading. It is for my readers who wish to contact me via email for whatever reason – rather than leaving a comment or question in the comments section.
The usual comments section will remain of course. And you can also subscribe to my RSS feeds for both posts and comments. This facility is also on the sidebar.
Lurking with books
I love lurking with books.
Let me explain. I am foremost a writer. (Okay – if you’ve read my About page I was sidetracked in teaching for 35 years).
Because I am writer I am also a reader.
Because I am a reader, I love books.
Because I love books, I lurk in bookshops. A lot. Sometimes too much.
Because I spend so much time in bookshops I buy far too many books. I’m going to have to make a few extra bookshelves very soon. (I also love making things with wood.) I am also going to have to earn a great deal more from my writing in order to feed my book addiction. (I recently read on someone’s blog that they had a book “addition” problem. Yeah – I have that too. I’m not sure if it was a typo or deliberate, but I like it.)
Sad News:
I have two pieces of sad news about books:
- I have just found out that a major Australian bookshop chain is about to open a new store right here in my home town of Murray Bridge. Previously I had to drive an hour to go to any large bookshop. Now it will be only five minutes away. Poor me.
- This morning I checked Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger site. He relates how he spent several hours in a Melbourne bookshop reading about himself in a book. Now, that’s rather funny – and also a little sad. Not sad that he wants to read about himself but sad because I can’t yet do the same. I must keep at this writing game, become moderately famous and then be able to spend time in a bookshop reading about myself. The ultimate ego trip.
How to run a home based business
Many writers and bloggers are trying to turn a dream into a successful home based business. Working at home has many attractions, many benefits and can be very cost effective. There are, of course, many pitfalls too.
As far as I am concerned I’ve only been working at home on my writing and blogging for a little under three years. I’m not expert on the topic. My limited experience has shown up a few benefits.
Benefits of working at home:
- No commuting (this is a fuzzy one for me; all my working life I was never more than 10 minutes from work, 30 minutes if I rode a bike).
- You don’t have to dress up (and I will admit to writing while in my pyjamas; I couldn’t sleep is my excuse).
- You can work when you feel like it with no boss to check up on you (unless your wife/husband/partner/dog/goldfish give you a hard time when you are not working).
- You can eat and drink when you feel like it, not according to the company clock.
- You can go for a walk, feed the bird, water the garden and check the letter box anytime you want to.
Disadvantages of working at home:
- You need to be very self disciplined.
- You need to be very self motivated.
- It can be lonely sitting at the computer all day and night.
- It can be very scary trying to make a living from your writing or blogging when there is little or no money coming in.
- People get to know you are at home and will think nothing of phoning or calling in when you are trying to meet a deadline or the creative juices and ideas are flowing freely.
I am sure that with a little thought I could come up with many more advantages and disadvantages. I don’t need to because Tony D. Clark has an excellent blog called Success from the nest. It’s about working from home; he’s been doing it successfully for nearly 14 years so he must know a thing or two about how to make it all work.
Success from the nest has the added bonus of being illustrated by Tony’s own cartoons. Check them out.
Strategies for Blog Growth
There are many different strategies for growing your blog, its readership and your traffic. These strategies are endlessly debated on a large range of blogs. Many bloggers come to blogging expecting quick monetary returns. It doesn’t work that way.
Chris Cree on his blog Success CREEations has an excellent article about using the steady growth strategy he uses for growing his blog. He encourages the following sensible strategies:
A Winning Strategy
Personally I’m a fan of slow but steady natural blog growth. Here’s what I mean by that:
- Consistently write quality posts
- Read other blogs in your niche (have them in your feed reader)
- Comment those blogs in a way that adds value to the conversation
- Link to all the good stuff you find out there (with trackbacks)
- Be patient
You can read the whole article here. I recommend it.