I know it may seem odd to say, but the other day I was at a business meeting. When I was introduced to the group I was introduced as a blogger. It dawned on me; being called a blogger is not like being called a writer, there is a slight difference. A blogger isn’t a job unto itself like a writer, a blogger is more like a modifier, you do something else and you also blog.

I know plenty of writers; writers for newspapers, books and magazines, I even know a girl who writes manuals for computers. All of these people consider writing their profession. I, coming from the world of Information Technology (I.T.), have always considered writing as professional overhead. I write at work because I have to.

How many bloggers do you know actually make a living off of their blog. Very few, it’s like being in a band. Sure there are some bands out there that make a living playing music, but most musicians do it as a passion not a profession.

In that sense I am a blogger. I am someone who writes because he has a passion for talking with the hope someone maybe listening. My profession will always be I.T. but my passion could be considered blogging.

MYGOOGLEAPPS.biz is the first attempt at an RSS auto blog. All the content comes from 4 of Googles own blogs on Google Apps. The premise for this blog is to be “a single source for thoughts and information on Google’s productivity suite for cloud computing”. Initially monitozed via Adsense, I hope to discover some angle to harness affiliate marketing for it.

Launched: September 10th, 2008

Launched: September 9th, 2008

(Click here to take a link at the job post on elance.com)

I found a nice generic privacy statement at profitingfrompublicdomain.com that I like and have used here on flipthisblog.net and on some of my other sites.

• It’s you plodding through post after post, hating your rants and your words, loathing every sentence you drag out of yourself onto the screen
• It’s you typing, backing up, erasing, typing, backing up, erasing, and never making any progress
• It’s you, staring at the cursor, blinking… Blinking… Blinking…

My 3 Secrets

Somewhere over the past 8 years of blogging I have come up with a few tricks to overcome bloggers block.

1. Don’t Blog Too Soon
   Before trying to blog, it is important to prepare mentally for a few at least a few minutes, hours or even days (depending on the complexity of thoughts your trying to communicate) by mulling over the post in the back of your mind.
2. Develop A Simple Outline
   Before sitting down to blog, put together a simple point-form list of all of the key points you want to cover, and then organize them in the order in which you are going to cover them. Remember what your 6th teacher told you… it actually does work).
3. Just Start Blogging
   Yes, that’s exactly what you do. Once you have prepared mentally and done your outline (even on the back of a bar napkin) you are ready to blog, even if your bloggers’s block is saying “no”. Just start typing any old thing that comes to mind. Go with the natural flow. In no time at all you will get into a rhythm, and the words will just keep on flowing.

This is a problem over looked by many bloggers, but can be very detrimental to your SEO efforts. If I have 100 links pointing to my blog, but half the links use the www version and the other half use the non-www version (http://www.flipthisblog.com verses http://flipthisblog.com) of my main URL, then my backlinks are spread over to separate URLs and I am losing out on Goggles weighting that each of those links passes to my Blog.

The search engine spiders also may conclude that there is duplicate content with same text appearing on multiple blog pages. If the search engines see the exact same content on two different URLs which one will it rank your targeted term? Which version will your blog readers link to? There are no certain answers to these questions. The best bet for your blog is to make sure you have all the permalinks and page URLs in order from the beginning to make sure you never have any of these issues.

Within WordPress this can be done for you with the Permalink Redirect plugin. This plugin keeps your link architecture clean and ensures that each page is accessible only through a single URL.

Using the Peramalink Redirect Plugin

1. Navigate to http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect.
2. Right click on the Permalink Redirect Plugin Link to download the php file.
3. Upload the plugin to the plugins directory of your WordPress blog.
4. Activate the plugin within your WordPress blogs admin area for the Plugins page.

As a entrepreneur, a small business owner there’s never a good time to take a vacation.  But like anyone I need some time to recharge my batteries and give my brain a rest and take some time to reflect.

The summers over and my tomorrow is now here.

I am staring  a new blog today (writinghooligans.com) and re-focusing efforts on the four I already have on the go.

1. FLIPTHISBLOG.net
2. INTIMATELYPOWERFUL.com
3. QUICKLYOUTOFDEBT.com
4. BEINGPAULY.com

Writing Hooligans (WRITINGHOOLIGANS.com)

The name for this blog is a play on the term that describes fanatical british soccer fans (Football Hooligans). This will be a place on the web didicated to the topic of how to write, publish and make money of ebooks.