Do you have a question that you’d like to see answered or addressed here at ProBlogger?
It’s not that I’ve run out of questions to answer (I get quite a few through my inbox) but every now and again I like to publicly ask for questions to get a gauge on where the wider readership is at and how I can be of more use to you.
I won’t be able to answer all questions but will try to get through as many as I can. If you don’t want your name/blog to be linked to your question feel free to ask it anonymously. Please submit the questions in comments below.
Hi Darren,
What is your favorite blog software and why?
How to best sell link-ads directly? Do you have a forum, or an auction site that you recommend? Which of them is the best? I am trying to avoid the middleman (text-link-ads or such) and get directly to my customers.
Also, how do I know how much my text link ads are worth?
Darren — I’d be interested in answers to most of the above questions …and then some. But I’d also like to know your thoughts on corporate blogs — those that are out there and what you think a corporate blog needs in order to be successful. Mine is a corporate blog, but with a very different approach and audience than the CEO or techie-type corporate blogs. It’s a marketing blog with a very personal approach. Just want to know what you think is the value to a company of the typical corporate blog.
Thanks. I’ve learned so much from your posts — and links.
Why are you still using this awful font!? It’s very hard to read. For someone so into content you should have a more readable font *that can be resized by the user.*
I can help out if needed just let me know.
Hi Darren,
Your blog is an inspiration to me. My question is- “What is your best advice to all aspiring bloggers (like me)?”
Would you ever consider selling problogger.net?
— Phil
Hey Darren,
Your offer to answer questions is quite kind, and actually timely.
I wrote a post the other day Would You Delete a Post When You Know You’re Right about a situation I am going through about a post I had written a year ago.
The wife of the subject of the original post is now demanding that I delete the posts and any reference to her husband.
I haven’t revealed the name of the party yet.
I would like your opinion and ask if anything like this has happened to you?
Thanks,
Joe
Hi Darren,
I would love to know the answer to one of gabo_uy’s questions:
>Before creating a blog, what kind of market research do you do, and what >tools do you use?
Additionaly, I would like to know how that market research has evolved over the years.
Thanks,
George
Here’s a thought.
Extreme Makeover’s for Bloggers.
Go to someone’s website and tell them how they could improve their sales. comments, stories, ranking, etc.
Then as you become more popular, spin it off into your own consulting business and offer to do it for, say $40 per blog.
Then watch the money pour in.
Or not. :)
Hello Darren,
This is my first comment, but I have been reading your blog for several months now and I would like to congratulate you on a job well done. Your web site is an invaluable contribution to the blogging community.
I have a question myself that I would like to see answered, yet before I get to that, I would like to support the questions presented in some of the other comments listed, such as Brent’s comment, “How does a new blogger become relevant without pimping themselves out or getting lost in the shuffle?” and comment # 31 by Lintcollector (question too long to quote). I would really like to see what your thoughts are on these topics.
Let me segue now into my own personal question by stating my current situation in regards to blogging. For the past five months I have been doing a lot of research in regards to the successful operation of a blog and the potential results. The reason that I am interested in this is, 1. Blogging is a medium to transport your thoughts, visions, and/or experiences to an almost unlimited amount of people very easily and quickly, and 2. Blogging has within it the latent ability to transform into something that is not only a communications medium, but potentially a very lucrative source of income.
I am only 21 years old, and the possibilities of blogging intrigue me on a level that very few things have. Yet, to be very honest, I have no idea where to start. I mean, I do, but I don’t. I know that I need my own personal domain to have optimum flexibility in regards to income streams and to maximize name recognition and association. But, perhaps due to ignorance, I am unaware of how to go about handling this step of the process. What type of hosting should I go with? What type of software do I need? Etc., etc., etc.
Basically, I would be extremely gracious if you could create some type of checklist for people without advanced technical or HTML experience who are attempting to create a blog, but do not know where to start and in what order to proceed. I know what my niche will be; I already have my first 50 post planned out; I know that I wish to have a non-chronological articles section, a chronological blog section, and a forum, but I do not know how to go about bringing any of this to fruition. I understand that the topic of forum creation is somewhat of an advanced topic to discuss, but I would be absolutely grateful for some type of walk-through or guide that could assist the uneducated in creating a blog from scratch. I do apologize if you have already addressed this issue in the past, but I am somewhat lost.
I also apologize in regards to the length of this post. Lol, I am obsessive compulsive when it comes to grammatical accuracy and completeness of thought transmission through writing.
Thanks again,
Michael Daughdrill
Hi Darren,
I’d like to know: As a blogger: What matters most to you?
Thank you!
And yet another question came to mind today. I’m also considering taking out the “nofollow” tags in my comments so that readers can benefit from an incoming link just by commenting. Thoughts?
Hi Darren,
The question I would like to ask is:
If you had to place a bet on the future of search engines, what would it be
1) Semantic or
2) Social
Yahoo seems to be going social while Google is going semantic.
Hi Darren,
I’d like to know is it okay to use pictures from other websites for your blog? I see a lot of gossip blogs post pictures of celebrities from other sites. Is it ok to do so as long as I name the source? Example, if I want to blog about what happened on Oprah yesterday can I post a picture about the episode from her site? Thanks.
How many more social community/video sharing sites do you think the new Web 2.0 space can support, and what do you think the effect of “too many” social networks will have? i.e. another bubble burst?
Darren – my question is how you find product photography for your product-related blogs. Do you 1) take photos of the products yourself; 2) grab them off the manufacturers’ websites after asking for permission to use them; 3) grab them off the manufacturers’ websites without asking for permission (assuming it’s fair use); 4) do something else? Thanks!
Hi Darren,
Greetings and a hug from Costa Rica. I’m a big fan of your site and I’m about to start my blog soon (or site, I have not decided yet). I share the same concern as #43 Anthony:
“Hi Darren, I’m very interested in your work flow and routines. What is a regular day in the life of a ProBlogger like…” Not only the regular day…but the regular week! I’m very lost, I don’t know what to do first or how to organized my very little time (2-3 hours per day). Thanks so much for the opportunity. Pura vida!
What is more important, working on getting more traffic (digg, links from high traffic sites) or working on search engine optimisation?
If you had 10 hours to spend on one or the other which would benefit you more?
Hey Darren!
I notice most of your blog entries are short. I have a habit of not necessarily being long winded, but very detailed. I want to cover all the bases and make the article ‘full’.
However, I realize that I start running into posts that scroll through 2 sometimes 3 pages. I keep paragraphs short, try to use to accentuate, and bold/color where possible, but I still can’t help but feeling that while my site is great for content, some folks may not want to read all that.
Any suggestions on the length of my articles? I keep thinking that right now I want to build ‘pillar articles’ as I believe you called them, and then link to them later on. It seems to me that long and detailed articles now will help get me indexed and linked, and then shorter articles may keep the feed readers happy.
My dating/relationship blog is at http://www.mistergin.net/blog
Appreciate any replies :)
Hi Darren,
I’ve been reading your blog for a while and learnt a lot from your posts. My question is:
As a problogger, how much time do you spend on your blogging every day on average?
Thanks!
I will Exercise for Comments!
Sunflower
Hi Darren,
I’m very new to blogging, so let me just say this site is a big help! My question to you is about providing outbound links vs. original content. I understand how important original content is, but do links help generate traffic as well? As a novice blogger, I’m not an expert on certain topics, so my best solution is to simply link to sites that explain things better than I can. Will this just drive traffic out from my site forever, or can I expect them to come back?
I heard you own over 20 blogs. How do you stay motivated? How do come up with quality posts for each topic everyday? Do you have employees help you?
Hi Darren,
Don’t you ever get sick of blogging about blogging? =)
Seems boring.
Thanks,
Jason
why haven’t you reviewed the number one clothing line blog on the net???
I’m curious about the process of blogging, from the initial brainstorming to the final publishing.
Hello Darren,
I wanted to ask if you can blog about the future of blogging.Things are changing all around both in content and technology.Blogs are getting monotonous everywhere…everybody is trying to create something new but there is no proper guidance. If you can write about future of blogging and guide us all and what we should take care and do…it will be awesome.
I had been always looking for this kind of topic in problogger.
Hello, Darren!
I am Shankar Ganesh and I am 15 years old. I am from India. And I would like to ask you how far the design of a blog influences readership?
Thank You.
Where do I start? I want to start a successful blog that earns me cash but where on Earth do I start?
Darren
Do you think it’s okay for Bloggers to moderate comments? I, personally am completely against it [though others disagree], but quite lately have been getting too many stinkers [people try to pull down, write all BS, try to harm personally rather than stay in the context of post and that too anonymously!].
And that makes me rethink whether to stick to unmoderated comments or..to moderate?
What do you think?
-sinha.
pluGGd.in
I wanted to ask, how you put ads in between a post.
I want to know how blogging can be used in personal branding.
I want to be considered an expert in a topic, how best can writing a blog get me there?
I do not care about adsense or CJ.com, I want to know how to use a blog to get consulting and freelance work in my field.
In other words, blogging as indirect income rather than direct income.
I also want to know about filler/news posts.
I want to be able to write a great post every day but sometimes I do not have the time.
Is there a good way to creating quick “filler” posts of links or recent news so that my blog does not go unupdated?
Hi Darren,
I was wondering what an update of your ‘day in the life’ post would look like now that you have Xavier. How have the baby’s needs and routines affected yours, and how much have you had to cut down a lot on work or hobbies or both?
How to get cheap advertising.
Have you ever come across this problem…when I click on an outgoing link for another blog I get redirected to paypal.com…what the heck can be causing that? Any ideas?
Hi,
I’m very curious what’s your opinion about letting readers know that link that you’re just about to introduce to them is coming from some affiliate program. I noticed that you’re doing this from time to time, for example on the left menu of this site we can read “(some affiliate links)”.
hello darren,
i guess you’ve just opened up a pandora box by inviting the public to ask what they wanted to know – judging from the number of comments here …
i’m pretty realistic, so here’s what i want to know – how to get traffic from all the 3 main search engines namely google, yahoo & msn for a beginner blogger? of course content is king but without traffic, you’re as good as talking to the four walls …
for a novice who doesn’t know SEO or internet marketing, does that mean his/her blog is doom to fails? i think most beginners face the nightmare of not having enough traffic though their contents might be good enough …
to make matter worst, it’s not easy begging from authority website (such as problogger) to link to them due to obvious reasons … it’s rather demotivating to few-months-old bloggers to not able to generate increasing traffic after some-time …
cheers … thanx for publishing my comment …
http://stocktube.blogspot.com
What makes you unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed?
[…] In my recent call for questions from readers Barry asked: […]
hey im kinda new here.. i just want to know what it takes to bring a blog up to popularity. at first when i started blogging (which was kinda recent), i thought a blog should be like a personal diary, or similar to that. but later on i realised there are blogs which comment on everyday issues.. just about everything. so can you guide me? thanks.
and could you please review my blog and provide some tips of improving it.
Thanks.
kevin
will you answer the question “why do you want to become a tutor”
why do you want to become a tutor
I heard the one page blogs are on the way out with the search engines and you will need 3-5 pages in the future.
What do u think
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