Darren Rowse

Update: this competition is now closed to new entries. We’re now narrowing down to find our 10 winners who will be contacted and then announced here on ProBlogger on 24 April (note: I previously wrote 23rd of April but this was my mistake. As per the terms and conditions it ...more

When we put together Blog Wise, I thought I would be the only blogger who didn’t use many (okay—any!) of the productivity apps I downloaded. As it turned out, very few of the pro bloggers we spoke to relied on any apps or tools other than Gmail, Google Calendar, and ...more

There’s one technique for soliciting comments that hasn’t been covered explicitly this week, although we’ve shown it through each of the posts we’ve published in this series. What is that technique? Being honest. When we approached the bloggers who wrote posts for the series, we told them we really wanted ...more

To be honest with you, I can’t remember much about the first comment I ever received on a blog post I’d written. It was back sometime in 2002, after all! What I do remember is the thrill. When that first reader comments on your blog, you know you’ve finally reached ...more

Yesterday’s posts here at ProBlogger (Better Buttons Part 1 and Part 2) looked at the question of driving readers to take action on our blogs. Whether we blog for profit or pleasure, for most, reader action is an extremely important part of blogging. We need readers to action if we ...more

In May of 2008, ProBlogger the book (yep, the real hard-cover book) was released. It was a collaboration between myself and co-author Chris Garrett, and published by Wiley Publishing. The goal of the book was to summarize much of the writing that Chris and I had been blogging on our ...more

Last week I ran an impromptu Ustream chat session with my Twitter followers on the theme of Blogger Productivity (to celebrate the launch of Blog Wise). It was an informal and fun session (you can view the hour-long recording of it here) but one of the recurring questions that came ...more

I’m a big advocate for building a list around your blog, then making the most of it. A current list of email subscribers is an advantage to any blogger who wants to build their presence, whether you’re monetizing your blog or not. Often, new bloggers tell me they want to ...more

I posted this on my Google+ account and on Twitter earlier today: You know you’ve been blogging too long when a family member asks for parenting advice and you write a 10 Point Answer, start brainstorming catchy titles and considering adding images and further reading. The responses I got were ...more