udpate: This project is now closed. See all 343 submissions to it here.
Today is Day 1 of our latest ProBlogger Group Writing Project and like last time the response has been very cool. The project topic was announced around 24 hours ago and I’ve accepted 63 submissions already (I say accepted because a surprising amount of people (around 10%) didn’t follow the guidelines for submissions and I had to say no – please remember to submit new posts not previously written ones – this is a project to practice your writing styles rather than just highlight old posts).
The quality of submissions so far is great and I’m sure you’ll enjoy surfing them. It reminds me just how much expertise there is in the blogosphere on a wide variety of topics.
Before I get onto the first round of submissions a quick mention of the sponsors of this week’s project. They are New Homes, Webmaster-Talk.com forums, Google Tutor and OwnMySeat.com (full details of the $1800 of prizes below). Thanks again to them for making this project all the more fun.
So here are the first round of submissions. As you’ll see the ‘How to…’ theme gives a wide scope for topics – never before have I assembled such a diverse list. It’s not too late to join the fun – do so by following the guidelines here. Here’s the first round of submissions:
- How to Survive Your Young Husband’s First (Unexpected) Heart Attack by Olivia
- How to Overcome Fear by Scott
- How to Be Bald by Dave
- How to get promoted when you work from home by Home Office Blues
- Quieting the Monsters… or how to feed your Children by Miscellaneous Mum
- LJP – the Treo 600 Gameboy Emulator by Tam
- Make a simple diagonal page background using photoshop and css by Ben
- How to Be a Parent and Still Have Fun by Mama Duck
- Manage Your Manager – How to cope with Ineffectual leadership by Katy
- How to Dress Like a Desperate Housewife by Leora
- How to Make a Rubbish Website by Tim
- How To Participate in the Blogging Community by Ray
- The Great Flood by Jude
- How to Jam a Printer and Settle for Tie-Dye by Deb
- How to build a GARDENING blog that’s bigger than Boing Boing by Stuart
- How to Get Rich in Three Easy Steps by FMF
- How do I get a job in the Car Industry by Gary
- Become a Blogging Maniac by Tammy
- How to Dangerously Inflate your Ego via Blogging by Wendy
- How to Proofread Your Own Writing by Anne
- How to Sell Your Home for Sale by Owner by Rob
- The Inside Scoop on How to Get Published by Tasra
- Don’t get caught misunderstanding the difference between APR and APY by Ricemutt
- Set up your blog using Textpattern by Jaro
- How to write a great blog post by Leroy
- Integrating a Forum with WordPress by ZMAng
- The Process of Making a Stock Trade by Blain
- How to Keep Your Relationship Healthy With your Wife by Matt
- Take Your Cell Phone to the Next Level by Eltan
- How to Make Buyers Fall in Love With Your Home by Paul
- How to have Fun Programming: BounceF*ck by Tim
- 6 Ways to Improve Navigation and Increase Page Views by Joe
- How to Enhance Mac Security by fcodc
- How to Have a Relationship with God for Eternity by Scott
- How to Set Up Tor and Privoxy on Ubuntu Linux by Corvillus
- How to Save Money at the Grocery Store by Shannon
- How to Make Your Retirement Money Last by Arieanna
- How to Help Find a Cure for Diseases with Your Computer’s Unused Processing Time by Brent
- How to Play Video Games with a Baby by Lynn
- Quit smoking (or not) one flaw at a time by Northern Girl
- Harness the Power of Word Cross-References for Mammoth Documents by Andrew
- How to Let Go and Move on by Milo
- How to Make Time for the Important by Basil
- Get Healthy in 30 days! by Rt @ Real Muscle Online
- How To Turn The Greatest Idea Ever Into Reality by Ben
- How to load Garmin TOPO maps to your hard drive by Rich
- One simple knot that keeps your shoes tied by Blaine
- How to Tame the Caps Lock key by Jhay
- How to Make a Thai Girl Laugh by Tom
- How to Bring Art to the Unwashed Masses by Jennie
- How to Make a Short Film for Tropfest by Jason
- Channel Your Historical Mentors by David
- How to Start Bird Watching so that you’ll keep Bird Watching by Mike
- How to Choose a Bad Martial Arts Instructor by Chris
- Position your Fish Tank for Prosperity and Growth by Renée
- How to have a successful career in politics (Jamaican style) by Xaymaca
- Hair for Sale by Billy
- Showing Posts When there’s no Related Posts by Ken
- Learning the basics about Sharpening by Steve
- How to Make it Big in the NBA if You’re Small by Easterangel
- How to Find Your Niche by Alsuran
- Do Blackbirds Swoop? How to Deal with Aggressive Bird Behavior by Trevor
- How to Make a Family Documentary by Ron
Thanks everyone – great work!
The Prizes
At the end of the week once all submissions are in I’ll randomly select five submissions who will each receive one of the following five prizes:
- One week complimentary stay (for up to 4 people) at a beach front apartment in Estepona on the Costa del Sol Spain (pictured above). This prize must be taken in the next 12 months and the winner must cover all their own costs in getting to Spain (ie this is for the cost of the accommodation only). If the prize cannot be taken by the winner they can also take an iPod (video) instead (by negotiation with the sponsor). This prize (valued at 1000 euros if taken in the peak season) has been kindly donated by New Homes on Nubricks.com. Thanks to Adam and Chintan.
- $100 Cash (in your paypal account) OR a month long text link in the Webmaster-Talk.com forums. This prize sponsored by Webmaster-Talk.com forums – thanks to Tim and his team.
- A Personal license for ExpressionEngine including a personal license for the forums module (worth $149). This prize is sponsored by Marcus from Nanoblogs.de
- A $149 yearly plan to Audible.com OR a $100 gift voucher to iTunes (your choice). This gift has been donated by Google Tutor. Thanks to Craig for this gift.
- $200 gift voucher from Amazon to spend on anything you like. Its been kindly donated by OwnMySeat.com. Thanks to Jason for his kind donation.
LOL! Hope you guys would want to visit Thailand after reading that “How to make a Thai girl laugh” post :D
How to waste an entire day reading posts at ProBlogger that have to do with How To
What a smorgasbord of How-To’s …
Hmmm. I think I’m heading to Thailand for my next vacation. :-)
I wonder if we will beat the record of 301 from the last Group Writing Project?
[…] Note: aside from being a great post this is also a shameless way to get in on Darren’s Group Writing Project and be in the running for some snazzy prizes. Check out the 63 How-To’s from Day 1 … Share this Post with any of these Social Bookmarking sites:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
LOL I love the variety, what fun!
[…] via Problogger […]
Wow, that is a great start! I’ve just sent in my contribution. Looks like I’ve got some reading to do here already though. A few titles have caught my eye already.
@ Scott: I do and I don’t want this to beat the last record. The more the merrier, but I don’t have time to read 300 articles :-D
Looks like I have a lot of reading to do when I get home. I’ve opened up a couple of posts that caught my attention with their title here at work but I’m at work so can’t do too much reading.
wow – great response in one day. i’m not going to get much work done today!
Wow! So many great guides and tips. Now if only I could manage to visit all 63 of them.
Tom (& Martin).. “How to Make a Thai Girl Laugh” was the 2nd one that caught my eye .. the first being “How to get promoted from working at home” .. Goes to show you that an effective title helps .. either that – or I’m overworked here alone in my SOHO and need a vacation!
I have read quite a few of them. I really enjoy these projects. I have found so many websites that I would of never found. I have had new people comment on my blog as well. Awesome!
This, combined with a random post I read this morning, got me thinking about how NOT to posts.
True that David Krug – I’m supposed to be a productivity guru and Darren is NOT helping the cause here! I’ve already been inspired to shave my head bald and ruin my hubby’s printer just so I can somehow find a quiet and happy place in my normally crazy house! ;)
[…] How to posts you have never seen before – 63 How to Posts to Add Spice to Your Day from problogger. […]
I think my only complaint about these contests is that I never end up being able to read every entry like I want to – there simply isn’t enough time in my day!
If only someone can invent a day with more hours, I’d be all set.
Great response…I read all of today’s submissions…Here’s a few that caught my attention…I’ve posted them with links on my blog. I hope to do this each day.
http://survivingnj.blogspot.com/2006/09/writing-that-caught-my-attention.html
[…] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your ownsite. […]
[…] –> This post is part of the latest ProBlogger Group Writing Project. […]
[…] Problogger: 63 ‘how to’ (tags: tips, hacks, trucos, howto) En: delicious — September 20, 2006 […]
Well, sadly, I may have to bail from this one.
I started my ‘How to’ post last night but after waking up to the mess, the only thing I can think of to write is ‘How to survive a coup in Thailand’ …
As you can imagine, it’s a bit distracting.
Oh how weird and sad is that – we’re just going on about making Thai girls laugh (one of the How To posts) and now we have a coup going on in Thailand.
Hope my Thai friends are all safe and okay.
Most everyone here in Thailand is safe. It’s very tame and seems to be well organised. Also, we’ve been expecting it for quite awhile.
The only pain is they’ve cut the phones, the TV and … like I was mentioning to Darren, given everyone a day off.
[…] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave aReply […]
[…] If you follow the steps above, your post will be linked to from a daily list of submissions and a complete list of submissions on ProBlogger.net! You may even be randomly chosen to win one of these 5 prizes: […]
[…] This “how to” post is a part of ProBlogger.com’s excellent Group Writing Project. Check out the site for all kinds of advice on how to do more than just blog! […]
Making RSS Really Super Simple…
As a company positioned smack in the middle of the RSS ecosystem, we spend a LOT of time telling all kinds of people about how great RSS is and why it’s such a beneficial technology. However, the deeper you get……
[…] This post is my entry into the ProBlogger.net group writing project. Its the eleventh hour before the deadline so I appologize for the crap writing. The theme is “How To” and I hope to teach you how to back up your DVDs so you’ll stop bugging me to do it. Things you’ll need: DVD Shrink 3.2 DVD burner DVD burning software such as Nero Burning ROM […]
What a great bunch of articles and bloggers! I have found many new blogs this way.
Star Money Articles for the Week of Sept. 18…
Here are interesting posts and news this week from the MoneyBlogNetwork members and beyond: AllFinancialMatters lists 5 things I wish I knew when I was 20. He also detailed his Bogleheads’ October Project which I’ll be part of. MightyBargainHunter de…
I think I’ll write for the next one about “How to Kill Your Good Fortune.”
The first item will be: “Get your blog linked on ProBlogger and then something happens to kill your post.”
Two of your links don’t work anymore: “How to build a GARDENING blog that’s bigger than Boing Boing” goes to a page with the link on it, and “How to Overcome Fear” comes back with a database error.
[…] Her is the list of submissions for the ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project. […]
[…] Following is the full list of submissions for the ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project. […]
[…] “Showing some link love” day! By Alsuran A few days ago I participated in Darren’s ‘How to’ group writing project with this post How to find your niche . Well, now it’s time to show some link love to the people that linked to my article. […]
[…] However I’ve now found yet another way of using Firefox – Smart Keywords – thanks to an article written for Pro-Blogger’s How-to Group Writing Project […]
[…] Link Love: ProBlogger has 63 ‘How to’ posts in the first day of its new contest, including my post on how to be bald. I’m more partial to the ones that don’t have anything to do with blogging, such as How To Make A Thai Girl Laugh and Get Healthy In 30 Days. […]