Tips for Pitching a Blog to a Network

Many network bloggers, or aspiring network bloggers, have great ideas for blogs. If this is the case, they might want to pitch it to their networks. The worst they can do is say "no", right? If you have an untouched niche or a fun idea running around in your head, do suggest it to your editors. Here are a few tips to help you out:

Take Your Time

Instead of rushing off a hurried email to your editor, take your time to craft a well-written, well thought out proposal. Describe exactly what you had in mind with the blog and why you feel it will be successful. Include:

Don’t Bug

Don’t bug your editor or contact at the network. If you don’t hear back in a day or two remember editors and people in charge are busy and get email inquiries from hundreds each day. After a decent amount of time, say 30 days, write back and inquire. If you still don’t receive an answer you have several recourses:

If the network turns down your idea

If the network turns down your idea, hopefully they will give you a reason. For instance, they don’t see it as a profitable idea or they already have a similar blog. You can continue to shop your idea around or you can start the blog on your own. It’s good to remember being turned down is nothing personal. There’s a business decision behind it, but that should deter you as a blogger.

You also not let one rejection discourage you from coming up with other ideas in the future. Bloggers are creative people and rejection is only a momentary setback. If you think positive, you’re sure to find an outlet for your ideas.

May 30, 2008 | Filed Under Blog Tips, Blogging for Others, Niche Blogging | 1 Comment 

Some Cool Niche Blogs

Yesterday Jennifer talked about how she likes to read blogs not in her niche or about blogging. I like to call them recreational blogs. I read them as recreation rather than work or research. What I love so much about niche blogging is seeing all the different types of blogs - and different types of passions. What I’d like to do today, if you don’t mind, is highlight some of the more interesting niche blogs I’ve come across. Some of this is to show you different ideas and another is because I like to give props to people who do cool things. Some of these blogs aren’t on my daily or weekly read list, but I did want to highlight them because they’re unique niches.

Behold, some great niche blogs:

As you can see, people will blog about anything, and most of these blogs do well. What are some of the more unusual niches you’ve come across?

May 29, 2008 | Filed Under Niche Blogging | 1 Comment 

No Link Love For Blogging Bloggers Today

I was going to link to some good blogging posts today, but decided not to. Deb did on Sunday anyhow, and we read a lot of the same stuff.

I like blogs in the niches I blog best; probably because I (thankfully) get to blog what I enjoy. I love architect bloggers, and also really like blogging and green bloggers. These are the topics I write about most, and likewise the blogs I visit most.

However, breaking out of your niche is cool. I think bloggers should have a good handful of blogs, that don’t relate to their own topic, that they visit on a regular basis. There are payoffs for visiting outside of niche blogs. The biggest is you have no idea what other people read. If folks see you around, making comments, they might click your name and like what they see. Sometimes you get the oddest, most seemingly out of character readers.

Example: For the longest time, at Offbeat Homes, I got a ton of page views from one guy. I went to investigate. Turns out he didn’t even have a blog, he was on one of the social network sites - MySpace or something like it, where we had one friend in common. All this kid (he was young) talked about was beer. How to get it, drink it, and beer based shenanigans; typical kid just found beer behavior. He did however, like my blog. He’d link to it, and this kid had oodles of pals, who also only talked about beer, but they liked beer guy, so they’d click on his links. End result, me with lots of page views (and some odd comments - but I can live with that). You never know who might like you.

Another benefit is it keeps you from wearing out. Maybe five of my blogs are green, or have a heavy eco slant. I love green, really, but sometimes I’m just so tired of thinking about it all the time. Reading outside of my niche probably saves me from complete and total saturation; my brain gets a rest. You can also get some quirky ideas. You’ll find stuff you don’t normally blog about, that you can perhaps slant to your topic. All in all it keeps things fresh.

So today, forget reading all the blogging blogs, forget blogs in your niche, go find something new. If you have no clue where to start, here are five random ‘out of my niche’ blogs I visit.

Now tell me five out of your niche blogs you like. I need some nice new reading.

May 28, 2008 | Filed Under Blog Tips, Blog Traffic, Link Love, Niche Blogging | 11 Comments 

How To Look Like A Smack Amateur

Don’t note your sources.

For crying out loud - this is blogging 101. This weekend I did my weekend prowl for cool news and other items, and must have seen at least 40 blogs with items, pictures, and quotes, yet not a source among them.

If you didn’t build it, make it, think it, create it, let me know who did. Nothing is more obnoxious than a blogger showing a house or cool art creation and not sourcing it. None of the blogs I saw tricks like this at were network based, but some were client owned blogs, or blogs for profit. Some of the blog were bigger names in their niche too. Shame on them. I’d list them, but don’t want to give them any link love.

If you are posting images or statistics or quotes with no source it’s not on the up and up where legalities are concerned, and worse, it makes you look lame and uninformed - read this: Blogs and Images.

Ok, rant over; I guess it’s just that few things make me as mad as finding a cool house I can’t mention or link to at Offbeat, simply because the blogger didn’t source it. Back to our regularly scheduled nice friendly tips.

May 27, 2008 | Filed Under Annoying Issues, Legal Blogging Issues | Leave a Comment 

PicApp: Benefits for Bloggers

Guest Post by David Peralty

Deb’s note: I asked my friend and brand new community manager for PicApp to offer a guest post letting you know more about this great free, legal resource for images. I’ve been using PicApp for several months, and while there are still bugs to work out, I also see improvements being made and a way for me to use news and celebrity images legally. The image you see here is from PicApp.

Most of the blog networks that I have ever been involved with don’t spend the money to have access to images. Either they haven’t considered this, or they assumed we could find the images we need from the variety of free sources out there in the market.

Unfortunately, these free sources aren’t always filled with the images we need or want, and as such many bloggers jump over to Google’s Image Search and use copyright images without permission. This is illegal, but for the most part, it has been considered harmless. The harmless factor goes out the window when you are using images for a network blog. Networks are businesses and as such they have to be treated in a certain way. They can’t violate copyright laws or they will eventually have to deal with legal issues that could cost money, and eventually ruin a network.
Some blog networks have already started creating content guidelines to protect themselves, while still not offering money to get the high quality images they require for their content.

PicScout, the parent company of PicApp saw this issue, and while tracking how much copyright violation there is with their Image Tracker service, they realized that there was a void in the marketplace. Bloggers wanted high quality images, but they didn’t have the financial resources to back it up. PicApp contacted Getty, Corbis and other high quality image providers to come up with a solution.

The solution is PicApp, and its service. PicApp provides Getty and Corbis images through a flash embed system. This protects Getty and Corbis from having their images stolen, and through an ad interface on the embedded image, Getty, Corbis and other image providers will make some money back on the use of their images.

This provides bloggers with high quality images from the top stock photography sources in a way that continues to keep the providers happy.

PicApp has now gone beyond just providing those images though, and has added features that make it even easier for bloggers to get what they need. PicApp has added RSS for search, allowing you to subscribe to your searches so that you are notified of new images being added to PicApp.

This is great for those tracking events, or constantly talking about the same subject, so that you don’t have to come back and search on PicApp; instead, we will send the updates right to you.

We have also arranged to have constant updates from our image providers, meaning that bloggers can find images of sporting events before they have even concluded. This gives a competitive edge to the bloggers using PicApp. They will have images of celebrities, amazing sporting events, or even political events before they finish allowing their posts to be even more relevant and interesting.

It has been proven time and time again that adding relevant images to a post attracts more attention than posts without any images.

PicApp is still in beta and as such we are still looking for feedback, so if you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please let me know either here on this post, or at david.peralty@picscout.com

May 26, 2008 | Filed Under Guest Blogger | 3 Comments 

Try Adding A Current Event Link To Your Posts

Over at Tree Hugging Family, co-blogger Peggy and I have been trying some different blog traffic building techniques out. If they work out, I may be sharing some here so that you can give them a shot at your blog. The first new trick we tried in May was a current event link.

A major issue at THF is that we post a lot, always have some sort of feature and poll going on, and we often have contests too. Who can keep up? We were trying to keep readers up to date with links before, but it got super annoying to end each post like this:

“Don’t forget to enter our contest, oh and this contest, and check in at the poll. We’re also running some special features this month like blah feature and blah feature, AND hey, are you signed up for our current green challenge?”

That’s like six links and it’s obnoxious. Plus, although we have a contact us page, it seems that people can’t find it, because we’d get comments like, “How do I contact you?”

We decided to try a current event link. Here’s what we did:

At the start of May we wrote one post and titled it current events. We made one basic link back that says, “Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in May 2008” Now, if you click on it, you’ll see that we have all our contests, features, and events, posted in link form in this post, plus we included easy to find contact information.

We’ve been updating this one current event post all month, and then we’ve been simply inserting this link at the end of each and every post we write.

Has it worked?:

So far on our end, it’s been much simpler than a massive reminder link at the end of posts. This also fits our main goal of having THF be a reader friendly experience. We want folks to find what they need without much work. Also, both page views and links to our blog have increased this month. It’s tough to tell if the master link is helping there, but it seems like it. We’ll know better after doing this a few months in a row.

Why not give a master current event link a try at your blog, and see how it works for you? If you do try it out let me know if your traffic goes up, or tell me what sort of response you get to it.

May 26, 2008 | Filed Under Blog Tips, Blog Tools, Blog Traffic | Leave a Comment 

Memorial Day Weekend Link Love

Here in the United States is a holiday weekend, though many bloggers are still working. I’ve been spending most of my time with my family but I’m sure to pay for that in a day or two! If you’re looking for a little holiday weekend reading, here are a few items of interest:

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Deb

May 25, 2008 | Filed Under Link Love | 2 Comments 

If You’re Not Feeling A Post… Stop Writing

Just a quick tip. Sometimes I get a “brilliant” idea for a post, start to type, get stuck, and then sit and ponder what to say next. HUGE time waster. Sitting and staring seems like an easy issue to avoid, but I know lots of people who note that they do this.

Train yourself to simply hit save and move on when you’re stuck. Whether you’re stuck on wording, or how you feel, or for some reason you didn’t have enough info to write the post in the first place; just stop. Hit save. Go work on another post. You can always go back later.

Do you ever participate in sit and stare behavior?

May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Time Management | 2 Comments 

Giving Each of Your Blogs Equal Attention

First, sorry to be MIA for 4 days. It’s been one of those weeks. “One of those weeks” by the way, is the perfect time to follow Deb’s advice on guest bloggers.

In Are You Playing Blog Favorites? I noted that I sometimes do play blog favorites, but honestly you should try and give equal attention to your blogs; within reason. I say within reason, because there are circumstances that can make it smarter to pay more attention to one blog over another. For instance, one blog I write has page view issues that aren’t my fault; it’s something on the client’s end that I can’t control. I do give this blog the attention I signed on for, but not much more. Since I’m paid partially by page views at this blog, and page views won’t be going up anytime soon (due to factors out of my hands) it’d be a waste of my time to give lots of special attention to this blog.

Aside from oddball situations like the one above, paying equal attention to all your blogs is a good idea. Giving equal attention means all your clients like you, all of your blogs earning potentials go up, and you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.

Solutions that can help you give equal attention to all your blogs:

Use a system:

  1. Post at your least favorite blog first thing of the day.
  2. Post at your least favorite blog last thing of the day.
  3. Switch back and fourth.

I like choice number three the best because it allows all of my blogs to get some attention and it’s like a tiny reward system - fun blog; less fun blog; fun blog. I do sometimes post first thing at my least favorite blog to get it out of the way; then it’s done, and I don’t have to think about it anymore. I almost never post at my least favorite blog last thing of the day, because it’s not a fun way to end my day, and I’m more likely to blow it off completely.

Quit wasting time on other things when you could be working. Things such as…

What else have you tried that allows you to give equal time to all your blogs?

May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging for Others, Time Management | Leave a Comment 

How Celebrity Bloggers Can Set Themselves Apart

Yesterday I talked about using your competition as a guide for setting your blog apart from the rest. Today I’d like to talk about one over-saturated niche where I don’t see much of anything new going on at all: celebrity blogs.

Celebrity blogs can be very popular and lucrative, just look at Perez Hilton, PopCrunch or TMZ. The problem is, with dozens of new celebrity blogs starting every day, they’re all starting to look the same. Each one reports on the same bit of news, without having anything new to say. Why would I want to visit a blog saying the same thing as all the others? As a celebrity blogger I had to learn to do a few things to set myself apart from the pack.

Ask yourself "What can I do differently than these bloggers?" "What can I say they’re not saying?" "What can I do to make people visit me over the other celebrity blogs??"

Instead of being the 257th person to tell us Angelina Jolie is having twins, see if you can find someone else to talk about. Find interesting facts or post a mini-bio on the different celebrities.

Try to narrow your niche. For instance, one of my celebrity blogs is strictly about celebrity role models. Another offers great lists and feature stories in addition to news and gossip. In fact, the blog offering celebrity lists is often quoted by radio stations.

Last summer everyone delighted in reporting on the antics of Britney Spears. Turns out, she was mentally ill and being manipulated by people she trusted. Instead of writing the obvious angle, dig deeper to see if there’s more to the news item than meets the eye.

Every gossip blogger thinks she has to be snarky, but that’s not the case at all. Try being a nice blogger and seeing what happens.

As you can see, there are a few different ways to set yourself apart as a celebrity blogger. Why do the same exact thing as everyone else?

May 23, 2008 | Filed Under Niche Blogging | 1 Comment 

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