As a matter of fact, that segment of the show caught my husband’s attention too. Apparently the blog is so successful that in 2005, she earned enough money to have her husband quit his job and work on her blog with her.

Inspiration and Imitation

That is an admirable goal and I fully believe that it is attainable by anyone who wants it bad enough. Whenever I hear about successful bloggers, I tend to visit the blog, get a lay of the land and spend a little time trying to understand what makes it successful. More often than not it’s a combination of the blogger’s authenticity and consistency of posting which gains a loyal following. In addition to the large following the blogger monetizes the blog in several ways.

I checked out the Dooce blog mentioned on the Oprah show and spent a little time reviewing the blog layout, reading her posts, viewing the comments (although the majority of the comments were closed), and analyzing the advertisers. When you view Heather B. Armstrong’s blog, you’ll see that it’s clean cut and the template is well designed and it’s not very busy.

Experimentation

In viewing her ads, I noted that she was using AdBrite as one of her monetization sources. So, in the greatest form of flattery (imitation), I signed up for AdBrite to give it a whirl. Over the next few days, weeks or how ever long it takes for me to get things just right; there will be a few experimental ads. The unfortunate thing is that the only way I can tell if the ads work is by going live. You guys get to see what I see (whether we like it or not).

Personally, I don’t care for some of the features, but I haven’t quite figured out how to configure them as yet, so if you get annoying pop up ads for a bit, please forgive me, I’m still working out the kinks.

Spousal Support

My hubby is fully on board and supportive of my online writing endeavors. Let me rephrase that. He was on board before, but after watching the segment on the Oprah show, he’s even more on board now. The thought of earning $40,000 a month is a surefire way to get family support.

If you haven’t done so already, check out Dooce. See what you can learn from this very successful woman.  BTW, in addition to her blog, Heather B. Armstrong authored a couple of books.

My reasons for dropping Smorty

Here’s why it doesn’t work for me. Further to my earlier post about not quite getting the hang of claiming new assignments, just the other day I decided to sign into my Smorty account to see if anything had changed.
[smartads]
The only blog I have registered with Smorty is this one, No Job for Mom. I don’t know why I registered this one, because I don’t accept paid posts on this site. My other site, A Few Cool Products is where I accept payment for posting.

Anyway, when I signed into my Smorty account, I saw that I had 6 new opportunities. Getting a little excited I decided to take a look at them. Here’s what I found:

Yes, they were all opportunities for drugs and gambling. A perfect fit for No Job for Mom, right? Not! To top it off, they only pay $6.

Paid Spam

99% of the spam that I delete from my blogs is from drug and gambling companies. Why would I want to write posts for them?

Managing My Time

As a freelance writer, time is very important. If I don’t write, I don’t get paid. Rather than wasting my time periodically signing into Smorty to see if they have viable writing opportunities, I decided to drop them from my writing arsenal.

I’m sure I’ll replace them very shortly with another, better opportunity.

Drawing a mental blank, I decided to write about 10 things I learned from my first 100 blog posts. Ready? Here they are:

1. You can never get rid of spammers. Even though the WordPress plugin Akismet is installed on this blog, I still get a few errant entries that must be deleted.
2. You won’t always agree with your readers comments, but approve them anyway. My initial reaction was to hit the ‘delete’ button to send them into the cyber trash can, but I thought better of it. Instead, I welcome varying opinions. I say that with the caveat that if the comments are rude, disrespectful, ranting and just plain mean, they get deleted.
3. Google AdSense doesn’t always work well for blogs. My regular readers might remember my post about converting No Job for Mom from a website to a blog. After I converted it I noticed my AdSense income from this blog all but stopped. Initially I was shocked, but I realize it’s all good. There’s a larger plan in the works.
4. Blogging is a commitment (no duh). I’ve committed to adding 6 posts a week. I take Sunday off to honor God, spend time with my family and replenish myself.
5. You meet nice people blogging. Although my blog is new, I’ve met quite a few nice people here. The relationships are still young (like the blog), but I fully expect them to grow.
6. My family doesn’t read my blog. They know I spend a lot of time on the computer writing, but they only read a small fraction of what I write. No hard feelings.
7. I’d be lost without my digital voice recorder. In my advancing years, my ideas play a game of hide and seek (they hide well and I’m always seeking to retrieve them). With my digital voice recorder, I can always find and capture them. I strongly recommend a digital voice recorder for anyone serious about writing.
8. Don’t get intimidated. When I first started this blog I was easily intimidated because of the tons of good blogs out there on similar topics. I became paralyzed by fear and feelings of inadequacy. Other blogs had a large readership, they had a better blog design, they were around longer, they had newsletters and were earning tons of money. I focused on their success to my detriment. Now I look at those blogs, appreciate them and learn from them. They are a resource and not a competitor. It’s all about how you look at it.
9. Build a Blog Bank. Because stuff happens, I found there were times when I couldn’t blog about the topic I intended to. Therefore, I would reach into my ‘blog bank’ and pull out one of my almost complete blog post, complete it and then post it. It saves time and allows for continuity. Setting up pre-written entries to be published at a scheduled time works even better. I haven’t evolved to that level quite yet.
10. Be myself. Although this is the last item, it is by no means the least important. I’ve found the one thing that follows me everywhere I go is me and my personality. So, who else can I be but myself, and my blog is a reflection of that.

Blogging Goals for the Next 100 Posts?

Get 5% better. Sounds like a rather tame goal, but if I can complete 100 posts in 95% of the time it took me to accomplish the first 100 posts. That’s an improvement. If each month I increase my readership and my income by 5%, I’m headed in the right direction. If I get 5% more backlinks each month, that’s a plus.

As with the game of basketball, a team wins the game 1, 2 and 3 points at a time. There’s no 20-point shot in basketball. I’m willing to plod along increasing my success 5% at a time. I’m a patient woman (most of the time).

There are a few more things I learned from my first 100 posts, but judging by the snoring emanating from my computer, I’ll stop here.

There are all types of ways to generate traffic to your blog. You can spend your time, your money or both trying to get traffic. You can spend time submitting your pages to social networking sites, writing articles, commenting on blogs, posting in forums, etc. Or, you can spend your money purchasing links, buying the latest gadget or subscribing to a monthly program “guaranteed” to bring you traffic. I tend to spend time rather than money generating traffic.

BlogRush

Since my spare time is dwindling and I’m frugal and don’t believe in paying for traffic, I was pretty excited when I stumbled across a website that can generate blog traffic without spending a lot of time and of course not spending any money. The name of the site is Blog Rush. With BlogRush you can generate targeted traffic to your blog for free. The cool thing about BlogRush is that the longer you use them to more exposure your blog gets.

Here’s how it works.

First you go to the BlogRush site and setup an account. All you have to do is provide your blog name, the URL, the RSS feed location and select a blog category that best fits your blog. BlogRush will generate a code that you must insert into your blog. Once the code is installed it takes approximately one to two days for BlogRush to review your blog for approval. They use a manual approval process because they want to weed out bogus blogs.

In my case, in less than 24 hours my blog was accepted. Once accepted, my BlogRush widget (yes it’s the gadget located to the right side of my blog) began displaying the latest posts for blogs in my blogging category. These blogs are all approved blogs within the BlogRush network (I have the option of filtering out blogs and/or keywords that I don’t want to appear on my site).

Now the fun part

Every No Job for Mom page impression in which the widget is displayed, my blog earns a credit. A BlogRush credit means that my latest blog posts will now be displayed as a link within widgets on other related blogs across the BlogRush network. So, if my blog gets 100 page views daily, that means that my latest post will appear 100 times on related blogs within my blogs category. Pretty cool, huh? Wait, it does not stop there.

Referral Growth

Here’s where it gets good. If someone clicks on the “Add your Blog Posts FREE” text or the “Blog Rush” tab at the bottom of the widget, they have the opportunity to sign up for their own BlogRush widget. If they do sign up, I’ll earn credits not only of my blog’s page impressions, but also for each referral’s blog impressions.

Stop and think for a minute. Let’s say my blog gets 100 page impressions a day and so does my referral. As a result, I earn 200 credits each day so my latest blog posts will be displayed on 200 related blogs across the BlogRush network. But it doesn’t stop there.

Exponential Exposure

If my referral “A.” with 100 page impressions a day gets a referral “B” who also has 100 page impressions a day guess what: “A” + “B” + “Me” = 300 daily earned credits. Yep, that means my latest blog post is now being displayed on 300 network blogs per day.

BlogRush goes 10 deep with referrals so referrals “A” + “B” + “C” …. “J” + “Me” = A lot of impressions. You see how it can exponentially increase your blog’s exposure.

You can add as many blogs as you want your account and earn credits across each of the blogs. The key with BlogRush is to title your posts with attention grabbing, eye-catching titles. You don’t want spammy titles but you don’t want bland boring titles that wont entice the reader to click on your link.

Check it out

For more information on blog rush check out their website. Be sure to watch the video tutorial. It explains the whole process a heck of a lot better than I did. It’s all about generating free blog traffic.

Define Professional

In a recent conversation with the hubby, the topic of becoming a professional came up. From his viewpoint, using athletes as a measuring stick, once you receive payment for what you do, you’re considered a professional. I remember years ago, “professional athletes” who made a living from their sport were not allowed to participate in the Olympics. Apparently, that requirement was relaxed as professional basketball players now play on Olympic teams.

Hobby or Profession

A professional blogger, in my opinion is one who consistently posts quality content coupled with the ability to earn a reasonable income from blogging. The cross over from hobby to professional is all about the money in my book. Although I’ve earned a few shekels from blogging and I believe I have quality content, I still don’t quite consider myself a professional blogger. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ll consider myself a professional blogger when the income from my blogs can support my family. Until then, I feel it’s still a hobby.

Where do You Fit in?

What about you? How would you define professional blogging, and have you stepped across the line and entered the professional blogging realm?