eXtra For Every Publisher
In such a saturated market as blogging tips and monetization advice, finding a blogger that actually knows what he’s talking about is quite a breath of fresh air.
Meet David Peralty, a blogger with two years of experience behind him, and his blog, eXtra For Every Publisher. I’m saying that he knows what he’s talking about because he’s the Director of Communications at Bloggy Network and he’s a blogger since 2005, with over 4000 articles published since then.
This kind of blogging experience can’t be found easily online, and the fact that he could buy a house from blogging and some cool stuff, proves that he knows what it takes to make it online.
The Content
My Favorite
I’ll start with my absolute favorite post from his blog, Starting a Blog: Idea Mapping. Almost every blogger out there (myself included) takes at the most couple of hours thinking of what he wants to do with his new blog. David took two weeks to prepare for the launch, writing a long to-do list and preparing around thirty sections and writing down hundreds of post ideas. He recommends that when you start a blog you prepare a long list of post ideas for the first 3 months of your blog, and I couldn’t agree with him more.
So many bloggers skip this step and get right into producing content, and they eventually have huge gaps in their publishing, or close down their blog, and neither route will bring you closer to becoming a reasonably paid blogger.
That was exactly my situation when I started this blog. I only had around twenty ideas written down, some of them for guest posts that I haven’t done yet, so I didn’t keep a consistent posting schedule. The fact that I managed to have a respectable growth anyway, only makes me wonder where I would’ve been right now if I would’ve seen his article before I started this blog. Bookmarked!
Promotion
Something that I’m planning to start doing this week, guest blogging can be a nice way to bring some extra subscribers and get your name known, and David talks about his experience with that in What You Can Learn From Three Recent Guest Posts By Me.
With all the Digg hype in the webmaster world today, some of us keep forgetting one of the best methods of promotion: word of mouth. He explains a bit how he gets it started and it’s not a surprise that it’s based quite a bit on networking in the beginning.
Blog Networks
Not surprising considering his work with Bloggy Network, David has quite a few posts about blog networks, starting with the advantages of working with a blog network and the disadvantages, continuing with starting a blog network and 46 things to do before launching one, his blog is a great resource for anyone that wants to get into this area. It’s the first blog that I see that gives tips on this subject, maybe because few have the experience he gained in the last two years.
To be honest, I’d love to start a blog network, and it’s one of the things to do on my long term list, and David’s blog is a great resource for that. He even talks about his own failed blog network, and while I’m sure that he would do much better now, it’s great to know what problems you can have if you start one.
Speed Linking and Podcasting go well together
I haven’t seen many people do this, but it’s a great way to add to the conversation. David does a Podcast series where he covers the best stories from the 45n5 Top 50 blogs and adds his own experience to the comments, making it quite an interesting listen.
I don’t really get why only the top 50 bloggers are covered though. There are a lot of great bloggers out there that don’t get the attention they deserve, and what the A listers talk about is pretty well commented already. Maybe it’s linkbait for the A bloggers, but I got the feeling that the smaller ones would appreciate much more being mentioned in a podcast.
Design
eXtra For Every Publisher uses a free WordPress theme, the one released by CopyBlogger and I can’t find much fault to it. It’s clean, not overloaded with information and has plenty of space for content. Advertisement is kept to a minimum and it’s not annoying at all. The only thing that seems out of place is the Subscribe by e-mail box, which is below the fold, actually the last in the left sidebar. From my own experience though, bloggers don’t seem to use this option that much, since I for one have about 4% of my readers by e-mail subscription and the rest by RSS.
He also released a free WordPress theme, which you might be interested in if you’re looking for a dark theme.
Conclusion
It’s really tough finding something to pick on with this blog. Certainly not with the content, maybe with the need for a custom design, but now I’m just being picky since I don’t have one either. It’s a great read and I’ve learned quite a few new things while I was reading it, so I can recommended subscribing to it. You’re certainly going to learn a few new things along the way, and if you got the extra money and need an advice, he’s also doing paid consulting.
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