This guest post has been submitted by my son – little ‘X’ – who turned 1 today. I thought it was an appropriate day for him to make his debut as a blogger.
I’ve been watching my Dad being a ProBlogger for a year now – here’s 5 things that I noticed about how he does it:
1. My Dad Reads More than He Writes
One question I hear a lot of people asking My Dad is ‘how much time do you spend writing each day?’ I think it’s a good question, but a better one would be ‘how much time do you spend reading each day?’ You see my Dad reads more than he writes. I think he does this because his writing gets better after reading what others say and because it means he’s learning more about his topics.
2. My Dad Talks All Day to Other Bloggers
Another thing my Dad does all day is ‘chat’ to people. He talks to them on his Skype headset, he types to them on his instant messenger and he even meets some of them in the cafe down the road for something called a ‘cafe lartay’. I think My Dad does it partly because blogging looks like a lonely job but also because it helps him blog better. It gives him new ideas, helps him get people to read his blog and link to it more and it even finds him partners to work with.
3. My Dad Only Uses a Few of the Ideas He Comes Up With
I was looking on my Dad’s computer the other day and found a folder called ‘posts in progress’ which is filled with text files of half finished posts. Some of them are just blank text files with a post name as the file name, others have 10 points that need to be expanded. Others are half thought through ideas or questions from readers. My Dad has hundreds of files in this folder and he puts more in every week. On days when I’m being a little bit naughty and he can’t think straight to come up with a new idea he goes to this folder to help him get started.
4. My Dad Works A lot – but less than he Used to
My Mum tells me that My Dad used to work from when the sun made my room light to after she used to give me the last drink of the day (I don’t have that drink any more because I’m a big boy). That seems like a very long time to be looking at the computer box. He still does look at it for a lot of time in the day but less than he used to. My Dad now takes me for walks every afternoon where we go to the park for a swing and on the weekends he sometimes doesn’t look at the computer box for a whole day. I think he’s a good blogger because he knows he has to work hard but especially because he knows when to stop working.
5. My Dad is Different, like the Wiggles
I don’t read any of Dad’s blogs (I want him to start one of the Wiggles and then I would) but I met a few people that do read them and they tell me that one of the reasons that they first started reading what he writes is because he had something different to say. I don’t know how many blogs there are in the world but I would say it is at least as many as all of my My Mum’s, My Dad’s, My Grandma’s and My Grandpa’s and my toes and fingers all added together (and maybe more). That is a lot of blogs and to get people to notice yours you need to stand out a little – like the Wiggles do in their colored skivvies!
I could probably think of a lot more things to tell you about blogging and perhaps one day I will (although I think I could make more money writing it as an e-book for you to buy – I am an Ontraprenor like My Dad) but I have to go and have my morning sleep now.
I hope you had fun learning about My Dad with me.
Awesome post. Happy birthday Darren’s son!
That is a awesome post! BTW, Happy Birthday.!
he he… Only a year old, on his first post, and he already writes better than I do…
happy birthday!
Great to see another baby blogging. I find it difficult to blog regularly because Mummy and Daddy are always hogging the computers. I have to wait until they have their afternoon nap to get any writing done :)
Happy B’Day,
you will be a good company for my son turning 1 yrs in 3 months, my son rambles at http:vidhukumar.com with a tag line, My journey through my dads experinces.
Vijay
Happy Birthday! Your birthday is the very best day of the year. Have a great celebration with your mom and dad. Your dad is an awesome blogger, teacher and mentor to people around the world. And good for you for getting started with blogging at such a young age :) . I knew I should have started earlier! All the best, Tara Kachaturoff
lol. The article was really cute. Really brilliant to have mastered language and keyboard at such a small age. lol
I’ve always said that Ghost Blogging is not necessarily bad!
A differnt way to write a post and, at the end, a difernt way to praise yourself a little bit ;)….But, definitely, a good and a very usefull post…
What really got me was the afternoons in the park.
Beautiful, sweet and true.
Enjoy as many moments as you can, Darren. As my good friend Jane reminds me time and again: The days can feel long, but the years fly by quicker than you can possibly believe.
Happy 1st Bday, Lil’ X!
P.S. Print out your favorite baby photos! Digital is more permanent than a sand painting, but not much else…
I think some of these people think that your son actually wrote that Dazza?!
Ahhh, wonderful!
Happy Birthday, Little Genius! :-)
p.s. Darren, your son is going to beat you in blogging, as it seems. :p
One of the best post published in Problogger.
My favorite post on this blog so far… Happy Bday to the little one – would love to have more of his perspective – very helpful to us bloggers… :)
Very nice, and so cute! Congrats little X!
Happy birthday to your son..!! it’s amazing and amusing to think that a few years down the road.. our children will be blogging as well.. ;)
So sweet.
Does this mean the blogging gene is dominant?
Congratulations. Very creative post.
Kid is A.Dorable. I haven’t even read the post yet, I had to say that first. And yay Apple.
Lol! Darren, that was a very creative entry and your son is really cute. I am sure there are a lot of envious people here. Who wouldn’t mind being born into the arms of a professional blogger?
Cute post, Darren. And full of good information, as usual.
Dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time. The only thing worse than reading children’s writing is reading the writing of adults pretending to be babies. I have no idea why so many fanboys are fawning over your drivel but it’s my first time reading your blog and can only assume it’s a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” thing. Ah, the egos of people who fancy themselves skilled by virtue of the fact they can type! Pro blogger, eh? Don’t forget to send your kid to school lest dada wakee-wakee and discover he need some help making thoughtful readers swoon.
Cool way to convey some good info! Thanks for this site…it’s a blessing :)
-jeremy
lol … that was such a pleasant surprise … it is not everyday you get to read a cute Ontraprenor who is also so bright :) Thanks for letting us know your dad a bit more ..;)
Many happy returns of the day little ‘X’
Great Post. I have a young son as well, 3.5 months and just starting to take blogging more seriously so appreciated this on two levels. Thanks
Thanks again everyone.
Joshua Longbuckle – I guess the post isn’t for everyone. In fact while I’d like every post I like to be universally accepted and praised I know they’ll never hit the spot with everyone. I do appreciate the feedback – although perhaps next time it could be a little more constructive. Welcome to ProBlogger.
Your son seems to be a brilliant blogger, How can we get him to guest blog?
;-)
Great post x. I think you might just be a little better than your dad on this one. by the way, Happy Birthday.
Great example of combining more thoughts occupying your mind into one.
While I find that writing with someone else’s voice than your own can go terribly wrong I found this to be done just right. Not too sweet and not losing sight of what you actually wanted to say while getting to mention what else is important to you.
I have no idea who the wiggles are and probably that’s a good thing. The 5 points, which seems to be a little lost in some comments, are however really something worth striving for. I particularly like the first one, but perhaps that is because I haven’t gotten to the others yet. :-)
Nice to see another fellow young blogger! We should be pen pals. ;-) I think you should start a blog on The Wiggles. I would definitely visit.
James
LOL @Jan…you don’t know the Wiggles? Lucky you! My youngest child will be 10 this year and he was just old enough when the wiggles hit big in the states to not be interested. I count myself lucky, ha.
Cute post Darren!
Joshua Longbuckle’s comment did nothing but make me click on his link and vow never to buy anything from Buckle Inc. You are too polite Darren I would have slammed the idiot.
Darren,
Big fan of your blog, over 1-year + reading. Not disappointed with the post, just not interested, seemed to me just irrelevant and a time waster. The only other thing worse is your SpeedLinking posts. Argh.
Otherwise, keep it up and props for a wonderful blog.
I’m glad someone said what I was thinking.
What did any of this have to do with your topic of blogging? I stopped reading after I saw the picture and headline. Stupid post with nothing but fluff in it.
Seduction Chronicles – like I said to Joshua above – I didn’t expect it to appeal to everyone. I did hope it might be useful though. The reason I… I mean X wrote it was because I get a lot of emails from readers who think writing a good blog is just about posting something vaguely interesting each day. When they start doing this they realize that there’s more to it than that but don’t know what to do.
So I thought a post that encouraged bloggers to do these things might be helpful to give some advice and isight:
– Read more
– Connect with other bloggers more
– Have an ideas folder
– Have some work life balance
– Differentiate themselves and produce something unique
Problem is – I’ve written some of that stuff before and so I began to think a little about how I could take my own advice and do something a little different. So a post by a 1 year old became the way to attempt to get the points across.
The other reason I did it this way was because I think it’s important for readers to see a different side of the bloggers that they read. I have a lot of people ask me how X is going and so thought that this might be a good way of keeping people in the loop without going off topic. I guess it didn’t work for a few people.
In terms of the speedlinking posts – I’d like to hear more on why you don’t like them as I do get a lot of positive feedback from them too. Again, my reasoning for them is simply that there are a lot of other blogs out there writing content that I think readers would find valuable. I want to be able to share it with readers and the speedlinking posts are a quick way to get what I consider to be worthwhile posts on my readers radar.
I can understand they are not everyone’s cup of tea though and would be interested on a little more feedback on what you don’t like about them and if/how they can be improved to make them more useful to you as a reader. As I always say – I welcome and seek this kind of feedback (it’s the first time anyone’s said it to me) but any suggestions would make it even more valuable.
Thanks for speaking up though – I appreciate that you take the time to let me know what you’re feeling.
Grant – thanks for the feedback, although I find it odd that you’d say that there was nothing but fluff in it but that you didn’t read past the picture or headline. More than happy to take some critique, but taking a moment to read the post you write off might give me a little more reason to take notice.
Great work lil Problogger. I’m glad to have read your post.
Very creative Darren! Too bad we can’t please everyone. I hope to see more of your creative posts and wonderful insights.
Seduction Chronicle:
Are you kidding? This post is one of the most creative post I’ve read. Maybe you should start to be more creative in your posts. I’ve been to your blog and I think we both seriously need to be more creative with our post. Or we’ll kill our readers with boredom and ‘same-same’ stuff.
And the SpeedLinking post was a great idea.
Happy Birthday to your son.
Very nice post Darren.
A very creative and amusing post! I love this!! happy birthday to your little x.
Oh! He is so cute. Hasn’t the year gone quick?!
Great post. You Australians have some strange names though. Your wife is V and your son is X. If you have a lot of pets, the name thing could soon get confusing.
Great post! Your son is a chip off the old block. Tell him Happy Birthday from Austin, Texas and to enjoy this year. It all changes when he hits two and for the most part is all downhill from there. :-)
Ripple On My Friend!!!
Steve
What a creative idea for a post!
I really enjoyed it. :-) And I think this is my first comment here.
Hi Darren, just wanted to say thanks for demonstrating such a professional response to handling comments – positive, critical, questioning and all.
One of the things I like about your blog is that we can learn as much (if not more) from the way that you do things as from what your write.
Joanna
X, you have amazing eyes. Your advise was valuable and in language even I could get. Happy Birthday.
PS, I know you will doubt it one day, but your dad is very clever.
Hi Darren,
Happy Birthday to little X. I hope the world is a kinder place for him when he’s your age.
Impressed with the way you handle the negative comments. It’s always one thing to be professional in a post, another when replying to comments in said post.
Hmmm, I wonder what kind of machine he’ll be pounding away on when he starts his own blog? Perhaps he’ll be the first 4 year old blogger in history. I suspect I’ll still be alive then. :D
That’s cute. But it also gives me insight into your daily focuses as a professional. I’m implementing these ideas into my strategy as we speak.
That’s certainly is a creative use of your chromosomes. Thanks for being able to create something that is informative, entertaining and personal all at the same time. Genius.
This is a beautiful post! It’s so nice to get a sense of who you are outside of Problogging. I think that this humanized your blog… Don’t get me wrong. I love Problogger, and love what you do.. but this is like heart of the matter. :)
Your son’s a natural. The “I”‘s have it !
Hey ! I learned a lot from your tips thanks dude. You will become a good blogger . Keep on blogging . :)