I can’t help but write this post with a little bit of misguided anger. I read a blog earlier today (which will go unnamed) where the author lamented the make money online niche. He wrote that new bloggers to that niche would be best not to even start. Why not find a truly marketable skill?

It didn’t stop there. He felt his own grammatical prowess should be a guidepost for other bloggers. They should step up to the pencil mark on the door, and, if they weren’t tall enough, turn around and go home. What a ludicrous message to send out into the blogosphere.

Why the Attitude Sucked
First of all, I try to nurture my blogging voice. I do this by first seeing what I want to present. I enjoy being helpful, nurturing, excitable, and honest. I don’t desire to be pessimistic, downtrodden, elusive, or callous.

How do you know how you sound? Maybe this guy thought his blog post was the shining light in the middle of the dark Blogosphere. His was the pinpoint view of truth. We should all follow its guiding light to the promise land.

Maybe it would lead me where I don’t want to be — on the couch reading the newspaper, not caring about following my dreams.

Our attitude shows in our blog posts (see sarcasm above). What reader constantly wants to read depraved, arrogant drivel? I want to read positive, upbeat informative posts. The blogs I read focus on a number of things, and the ones to which I subscribe always have a positive message.

I’m not an expert. I do know a fair amount on writing, but I wouldn’t say I know every grammar rule out there. Does this mean I shouldn’t have a voice? Should I not share what I do know with others? I think I should and I should do it in the same positive manner that I have up to this point.

Some bloggers take on the antagonist role. I understand that, but it should be clear from the beginning. Even the bigger antagonists on the internet find time to relate to their readers.

I think it’s the tone used when talking about a topic. If I sound too strict, then you might think I’m an uptight guy, and my value as a blogger drops. In a certain niche, a helpful tone can carry you further. Others might not agree, but I don’t really see a need to be too caustic.

How to Change Your Blog Attitude?
We all can get off course. I have found my voice to be obtuse at times.  I have to rewrite sections of posts because they portray my ideas in a way not aligned with how I want to be. I call it reinventing. I have a voice I want to nurture and, for it to succeed, I make alterations to my message, strengthening my blog’s voice.

My blog attitude refers to the implied message I give out on any subject. I can write about an iPhone and be negative.

The iPhone should come with a quarter slot in the top so I can keep feeding it money throughout the day.

I can also talk about the same thing with a positive spin.

The iPhone makes me feel like a boy with a new toy, causing me to forget how much it costs me everyday.

Having a positive attitude can bolster your readers’ confidence in your message. Portraying a negative persona can be difficult to master. One negative site portrays the make money niche as an impossible dream. The Can’t Get Rich site pulls off the voice, because he’s not constantly negative. He simply doesn’t believe you can make money online.

I myself become frustrated when I read big bloggers who post with brazen errors. Give me a break, I think. They can afford to hire an editor.

I can’t.

We create our attitude with our perception of the world. If niche bloggers are writing boring content, then we can lament those bloggers or encourage them with our own blog attitude post. When we believe we can change the world, we just might.

Money or no money, I will continue to write until the blogging wheels fall off this old wagon.

I think this post title sums up my feelings from this morning. I woke up to find my Feedburner count had dropped by 11 subscribers. I quickly felt the pang of defeat. I wanted to know what could cause such a sudden drop in readership. I had written good content, right?

 I did a quick blog search through Google. I think this is the quickest way to find out what’s happening in the blogosphere. I found a number of articles talking about Feedburner counts dropping yet again. The first search I found took me to the Feedburner blog, which had a post from yesterday.

Google Integrating Feedburner
It sounds like the big G will be swallowing fire. The Feedburner crew has been hard at work behind the scenes making their service more Googley. It wasn’t until I read the comments on the post that I found the culprit for my lost subscribers.

Google Reader numbers were not counted yesterday. Oh, the irony.

So while integrating the service to be architecturally similar to Google’s backend architecture (i.e. putting/removing the junk in the trunk), they somehow lost touch with their very own service. I guess those are growing pains. Or is that indigestion? I don’t know for sure.

Living by Numbers
Needless to say, it’s rough losing 20% of my subscribers overnight. Someone on the comments of the Feedburner blog said their blog went from 500 to 150 overnight. I must say that’s a lot of Google Reader readers. I might have fallen out of my chair had I seen that much of a drop. As it was, my drop had me re-reading my past posts, looking for offending material. I’m glad it was just a glitch. You’re all still here, right?

Do you know how Feedburner counts subscribers? Curious? Mr Javo put up a nice discussion on the topic last week. You might check that out. In the meantime, I’m off to russle up some subscribers.  

Where in the blogosphere did you hear that idea? Oh, on every other blog?

Once when I was leapfrogging from blog to blog, I saw a pattern. 

The first time I read a post on using Adsense to make money I stopped, skimmed, then moved on to the next topic. A few blogs later and I find a post discussing Adsense using similar language, similar examples, and similar conclusions. All in all it was very, well, similar.

How then can we create something new? Over at Scribbles and Words, Jay delved into the topic with a post where he asked if your blog has a voice. He talks about the universal truth of there being no new ideas, only voices. After all, we cannot siphon water from an empty bucket.

Does our interpretation of the world indeed create our foothold in the blogosphere?

Spinning with Politicians

The recent caucuses and election hubbub has caused me to hear a lot of political rhetoric. This discourse usually begins sounding sweet, and then ends sounding similar. It’s similar to other candidates, previous candidates, other elected officials, until it becomes Hollywood — scripted.

Each presidential candidate tends to communicate better than the average American. They can spin issues in their favor, masking their failures in logic and past performance, or illustrating a point with vivid language or boisterous remarks. We follow each candidate to see where they stand, over by the workers or in the high rise away from view. But what we know of them we hear them tell us and divulge from popular media.

We follow blogs because they carry us with their words. We buy into their information, lessons, tutorials, voices, and want to learn from them. When we go out on our own to blog, we carry with us the lessons we learned from our online tutors.

How to Sound Dissimilar

A blogger may write posts that sound similar to other blogs. How could this happen? Well, we live in an intellectually cramped world. I realized this when I thought up great names for domains, only to realize, after a quick search, someone else already thought of celebritney.com or callaflower.com. How could I have known? I thought I was being original.

I often hear bloggers suggest we read popular blogs to gain inspiration. This doesn’t mean we copy content, but we see how successful bloggers put words to page and cycle through traffic like an inner city freeway. That’s the stuff of sheer joy, right? We all want to be successful. We all want traffic. But without good content, we will be stuck behind a big rig, honking in frustration.

If You Build It…

We build originality from what we know. Originality can be viewed as standing on the shoulders of the work others have done, but we are not standing on just on one shoulder - but on many. When we write about organizing our lives, and we also know a little bit about zen, then we create a blog about finding peace in modern society. When we love humor and also making money, we can build a blog out of our knowledge and humor. You get the idea. These people did not invent writing about organizing our life and soul or satirizing the successful for our own gain, but they do it well with everything they know.

I feel like my own blog comes from my experiences, the writings I’ve done as a freelancer, the blogs I read regularly, and the information pouring in through every crevice of my life.  It’s all come together in one climactic boom. I’m here spreading it to all of you. I’m sure you’ll pick up something you like, think about it, and use it in your writings, blog, or work. It’s how this originality thing works.

An original idea is like a multi-colored Playdough man, stretching his arms to the sky.

Isn’t it funny how the blogging mindset tends to seep into our normal everyday activities?  How often have you had random thoughts like “look at that cat, I wonder how can I blog about it” or “I can’t stand my boss - I can’t wait to blog about him”? The more we blog, the more we tend to think like a blogger. Such was the case for me the other night as I lazily tuned in to American Idol while cruising through the blogosphere. I started wondering to myself “what would Simon Cowell say about these blogs?”  Would he cut them to pieces in his smug, wisecracking tone? Which ones would he give praise and glory and a golden ticket to Bloggywood simply by saying “I like it”?

What would Simon say about your blog? Keeping this thought in the back of your mind before publishing a post might be a good reality check to remember. Does your post belt out “Living on a Prayer” with perfect pitch, hitting those high notes like only Jon himself could 20 years ago? Or did you waste days upon days standing in line (i.e. – writing your post) only to embarrass yourself worse than Paula Abdul at a Sunday AA Meeting. Just as it’s true in the entertainment business, the blogs that are the most likely to succeed are the ones that have heart. Believe in what you are writing about and be passionate in your efforts. If your only motivation is instant fame and overnight success, you will be destined for failure.

Am I saying you need to be the next pop culture icon of writing in order to have a successful blog? Of course not. After all, a star is born every minute, right? Sure, some people are born with a natural ability to write effortlessly, just like some can sing better than Kelly Clarkson from the moment they can speak. But this is not a requirement for success. With hard work, dedication, and something intelligent to say, your blog can have a huge impact on your intended audience. If you stay committed and passionate, you will almost certainly develop a following of faithful readers. Maybe it won’t be millions, but becoming an Idol in the eyes of a couple thousand is a definitely a success in my book.

Keep these tips in mind when working on your blog. It could be the difference between a blog that “blows up” with readers and one that just blows.

This post was guest posted by Jeff over at BuzzMyBlog. Visit his site to find out why his blog is a lot more than just another “Make Money Online” blog.

Have you seen the CopyBlogger exercise where they have you write blog post titles using Cosmopolitan magazine’s cover headlines? The exercise was interesting to say the least. Remember that post was lingering in the innovative parts of my brain when, suddenly, I checked my email. There was nothing new in the inbox. However, the spam folder was reaching close to two hundred. I investigated.

We’re all familiar with spam titles with characters and numbers to bypass the un-l33t spam filters of most mail clients. But Google mail has a smart spam killer. It doesn’t fall for such juvenile attempts. In fact, I don’t remember the last time a spam message made it to my inbox.

I scanned the folder of caught spam. I found only one affiliate blog feed in the midst of all the junk. Note to self: Do not sell too ardently in my posts, otherwise, the Google spam gods will strike it down. Aside from the integer messages, I found little of interest in the spambox. Then I saw it, the golden spam title glowing amidst all the rubble.

Don’t Wait for a Miracle

Out of close to 200 messages, only one title had any resonance. Yes, don’t wait for the miracle. It was a decent call to action. Of course, it is a bit trite, but we are talking about spammers here. They couldn’t charm the pants off a hamster.

The title also had an undercurrent to it. From the title, you know they will offer a quick fix to a problem that you otherwise thought would take a miracle to reconcile. Now you can do it with whatever they’re selling. Assuming you bought the title, you would be one step closer to believing the subsequent sales pitch inside the email. Did I open the email?

What Miracle?
A title is only a good title if it is followed up by a decent message. Not surprisingly, the spam message fell flat like a pancake on a plate. It was served cold too. The miracle was just as you can imagine — sexual in nature. How miraculous!

The miracle for the rest of us? The dissection of this message tells us that strong titles act as the good smelling food down the hall, while the unfolding of the article fills the stomach. The post’s message should not – ever – make us vomit.