As human beings, sometimes we have not ideas, until the point that we could think for an hour, and nothing would cross our minds… When I started blogging, I thought that I could not do something useful beside writing. The experience has taught me that you can do several useful things beside writing, changing my mind and making me the blogger I am now.

So in this kind of days, you have many alternatives beside writing, which you can do as blogger. The following one is a list of things that you can do when you have nothing to write:

• Make New Friendships: This is a very important thing that you should do always, but even more when you have nothing to write. There are people in my profiles who added me and we have not exchanged more than a welcome message. So I can imagine that you have this kind of people too, so you could talk with them by email, instant messenger or by phone, and attempt to make a good friendship. This way, you will get more people coming to your blog.
• Monetize Your Blog: You can optimize your blog to make more money than you usually do. Searching another programs beside you use, you can try and test another alternatives to make money online. After a time, you can choose these ones which are more productive for you. I usually do this by visiting blogs like ZacJohnson dot Com, usually Zac is trying different programs to monetize his blog.
• Check Your Blog’s Statistics: This is a good one, though many bloggers get obsessed with that. Is nice to see all those statistics that SiteMeter or Google Analytics can provide, such inbound links, outbound links or daily traffic…
• Answer Your Emails/Comments: This is something that you need to do everyday, but sometimes you have some pending comments that you never replied, and probably these people are waiting for you. So you can take this kind of days when you have nothing to do, to reply the comments on your blog, to reply your emails, invitations or requests. Is very important to make your readers feel important for you, otherwise they will not come back for more content, or at least, not often than they usually do. Another thing you can do related to the comments, is reread them! You can learn something new by doing this…
• Visit Other Blogs: Again, this is something that you need to do regularly, but specially if you are on stand by. It is very fun for me to visit another blogs, I really enjoy reading and sharing my opinion about the infinite topics that you can find in other blogs. Also, you can visit another blogs to get the inspiration that you need to write something, like writing a post in response to another one…

In addition of this, there are many miscellaneous things that you can do, such dropping entrecards, reading your subscriptions, redistribute your widgets in your blog to get a freshest look…. Whatever, there are several alternatives, you just need to find something that you like to do! I would be glad to read your experiences related to this topic, don’t doubt on commenting!

Happy Rambling

Recently I was reading some posts via RSS, and I visited some of them to leave my comments and share my opinions. This is something very common between bloggers, and it is something very useful that can give you a good amount of traffic, with the possibility to catch new readers.

While I was doing that, I noticed the diversity in the names used by the people, and it made me think about what name is best to leave comments in other blogs. Depending the case, the impact will be different, giving you more or less reactions to your comment. I thought in three possibilities of names to leave comments in other blogs, and my options were the following ones:

1. Leave comments under your own name: This is the first alternative I thought due to it is the most obvious. The problem resides in that if you leave comments under your own name, many people will not easily recognize you. I could start leaving comments under my complete name, and I’m pretty sure that nobody will know who I am. But this can be relative, I’m going to talk about it in the following lines…
2. Leave comments under your blog’s name: Leaving comments under your blog’s name could be an advantage, because at the same time you are pointing your link in a comment, you are “broadcasting” the name of your blog. The people will remember your blog’s name, making it a good technique to get direct traffic. Also, this could be better if the name of your blog can give a hint of what is your blog about, giving you more traffic if you comment on other blogs related to your same blog’s niche.
3. Leave comments under your brand’s name: Every blog have a brand, logically. Many of them are a contraction of the name, others a kind of tagline… The fact is that commenting with your brand’s name will cause a good impact in the other commenters, because they will be catching your brand’s name at the same time they are catching your blog’s name. Why? Because when they visit your blog, they will associate both names, something great for you.

But no matter under what name you comment in other blogs, there are some facts we need reconsider. In my case, my brand’s name is the same that my blog’s name. And also, it is how I’m named, so what’s more perfect than that? I comment under the name of “Mr. Javo” and everybody associate it with my little caricature in the header of my blog.

Also you can perfectly comment under your own name, just if you promote it. As I said, I could not start commenting under my own name because nobody will know who I am. But if you use your own name to promote your blog, commenting with it could work perfectly.

The conclusion of all this post is simple. You can post under the name you want, my tree presented alternatives are perfectly valid, but you need to be consistent. If you comment the first time under your own name, you need to keep commenting with your own name, forever! You can’t go away commenting with different names, and if you do, what is the point? Don’t you want to be recognized?

Hello everybody, this is a real quick post to invite you to participate in my actual poll titled “Do You Most Want To Learn About….?”.

With it I want to know what do you most want to learn about blogging, and depending the results, I will be covering these topics in the future, to help you and to keep this community growing .

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

Thanks for Voting!

Since I started this blog, many useful tools have been born: Entrecard, Spottt, BlogRush….. Now it is the time of Plurk!

What is Plurk?

Well Plurk is a pretty tool similar to Twitter. It is a site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life, in a dynamic screen where you can see every event posted by your friends. So as you can imagine, it is a great tool to expand your network, make more friends and get new readers!

I signed up two days ago, and I have received hundred friendship requests. Actually, I have 209 people who follow my events, making it a great broadcasting tool for bloggers.

Why to Use It?

When someone invited me to this new community, I reject the invitation. I thought that it was a totally waste of time, but after a minutes I reconsidered the idea and I visited the link. I liked how it looks and I could appreciated the potential for us, the bloggers! So, I signed up, receiving instantaneously several friend requests ( of course, I shared my profile’s link through twitter ).

the following one is a little list of reasons you should use Plurk:

• It Works As A Broadcasting Station: Due to the big amount of people in this community, it is perfect to broadcast your blog events. It’s perfect to promote a contest, polls, new posts and these kind of things.
• Brand Extender: As a good blogger, you need to expand your brand if you want to be easily recognizable in the web. By signing up in Plurk, your name will be spread between many people, who probably will be bloggers or internet marketers. In conclusion, it’s perfect to make new partnerships.
• Traffic Maker: For the same reasons commented above, it can be a new source of traffic. I have received some emails from people congratulating me for my blog, and then they made a little reference telling me that they saw my profile at Plurk. It works? I think so!

Basically, Plurk is a new social network which you can extend your brand through other bloggers, getting more traffic to your blog, increasing your readers and subscribers.

Add me at Plurk!
Do you haven’t an account? Sign up here

What do you think about Plurk? Share your opinions or tips here to feed this community…. By the way, don’t forget to participate in the Poll, which you can find in the sidebar, bellow the Skribit widget.

Bye Bye!

Hello everybody, as I told you yesterday, the post of today will be related to the suggestion made through my Skribit. Now, I’m going to give you some tips to increase the amount of readers in your blog .

To survive, the blogs need to have readers. The readers are a factor which can determinate the grade of success of a blog. A blogger can be the best of the Internet, but if he has not readers, it will be difficult to him to reach his goals ( as blogger ).

A primary goal of the bloggers is to have more readers. More than yesterday or the past week, but it’s too important to increase your readers to reach the success you want. But sometimes, is not too easy to catch the people who stop by your blog. So let’s check some tips to increase these amount of readers:

1. Good Content: Obviously, if your content is not good, the people will not read it. Writing quality content you will catch more people than you think. Remember, quality is best than quantity!!.
2. Taking part in Social Media Networks: This is very important if you want to expand your network and increase your subscribers. On Internet there are many social networks where you can socialize, make friends and share your blog posts! But is not enough by signing up, plus you need to be an active member to attract the people’s attention.
3. Making Contests: This is a good way to get more readers, and I will tell you why. The people like to participate in all these activities where they can win something for free. So you can give away whatever: entrecredits, banners, textlinks…. The truth is that you will get more readers if you know how to promote that contest.
4. Making Polls: Polls are a good tool because they can give you indicatives about a specific topic, but also, it can improve the amount of readers in your blog. Just make sure to place the widget in a visible area, so the people could vote easily.
5. Buying Advertising: Buying advertising, for example banners, textlinks or a review, will improve considerably your readers. If you advertise on JohnChow, thousand people will see your banner in a single day. So imagine how many people will see your banner, and visit your site in a month!?.

For now I could think on these five ways to increase your readers, but surely there are many more, I don’t know everything! Would be nice to hear some suggestions from you, this way we could learn together .

Happy Blogging : )

Blogging, what a wonderful activity made by many people around the world. Many of them write on their blogs for fun, others for money, and others simply to make another activity in their days.

The truth is that for everybody, blogging represent the same thing, a life’s style. If you love/like to blog, once you have started it, is too difficult to get rid of it. When you neglect it, you feel that you need something else to complete your routine, and that’s to write something in your blog .

As you noticed, I was away the last month. I was very busy with many things, but now I have a little more free time for blogging, socializing and all those activities I regularly made . My schedule was full everyday, and I had not time to do anything related to my blog. In fact, I have many ideas to blog about which I could not write in the past, but I will be publishing in them the next days.

I don’t know if you already got the point of this post. If you didn’t yet, don’t feel bad, I was not enough clear. I want to say that Blogging is a road that you never stop crossing it. Why I say that? Well because in the last month, thought I didn’t post anything, I received hundred of invitations, friendship requests and emails!! So I could stay away of my blog, but all those mentioned things called me everyday to keep blogging and doing my job .

If you like blogging, eventually you will take your blog back, of course, if you left it for a time . The great of take a break, is that you will return reloaded, and you will write and participate with more passion than ever!! I speak from experience .

So my fellow readers, tomorrow I will post about the suggestion in my Skribit’s widget, so stay tuned this week to get more reloaded tips from me!

Bye bye, have a nice blogging!