Darren Rowse

Our kitchen table is in a perpetual state of creativity.   Marker pens, sketch books, glue sticks, and paint sets are make their permanent home there because my five-year-old son (X) is a self-declared Artist. While there are some challenges with living with an Artist… (last night I almost broke my ...more

Here at ProBlogger HQ we’re gearing up for a big year of blogging. Central in our focus is a desire to make ProBlogger as useful to bloggers as we can. After all if we’re not helping you to improve, we’re wasting everyone’s time. To help us achieve this goal, we’d ...more

Recently on Twitter I was asked by a follower how to overcome an extreme case of writer’s block. My answer was: “Think about a problem you had three years ago and write a post that solves that problem.” The reason I find this technique helpful is: It identifies a real ...more

Yesterday we looked at the strategic question of, “What do you want new visitors of your blog to do?” It’s a question that’s very powerful in helping you to achieve your goals as a blogger. Today I want to take the question and apply it to repeat readers—an exercise that ...more

Here’s a little strategic exercise that I think is well worth doing as we approach the beginning of a new year. Ask this question: What do you want your readers to do? There are numerous levels you can ask this question on. Let’s explore one now (I’ll do another tomorrow). ...more

Over the last week on Digital Photography School we’ve been running a 12 Deals of Christmas promotion where we’re offering some big deals on photography related products over 12 days (each lasting for 24 hours). A number of readers of both ProBlogger and dPS have asked whether we are going ...more

Last week I was digging around in my Google Analytics stats and drilling down to look particularly at sources of traffic to my photography tips site. I noticed a new source of readers that has been creeping up in terms of how much traffic it sends. Here’s the chart from ...more

I’m regularly asked this question by PreBloggers: “How much work should I do on my blog before I launch it?” How many posts should it already have live? How many posts should I have in reserve and ready to go? Should I have a customized or premium theme, or just ...more

Last year I began a semi regular series of posts here on ProBlogger that explored the principles that I saw being exhibited in successful blogs. So far in the series we’ve talked about Listening, Trust, Usefulness, Community, Being Personal and Story Telling. Not all successful blogs will do all of ...more