As some readers know, I’ve been struggling back and forth with weather to keep up the jobs portion of the blog. It’s funny, because people mistake several of the job features on my site for the actual job blog. I use a service called Indeed to display jobs in many categories, but those aren’t jobs I post myself. They are simply lists that Indeed automatically generates.

If I were to stop posting jobs to the blog, the Indeed lists would remain, so I’m not so sure that very many people would actually be affected by the change. I do have about 350 subscribers to the job feed, so I know a few people look at the actual jobs I post, but I’m not sure that the Indeed tools aren’t the real attraction of my jobs page. Since those require no maintenance, they won’t be going anywhere.

The New York Times is once again attempting to move to a pay model. It’s an interesting approach they are using. You get a certain number of free page views per month (I think twenty) but if you access more than twenty pages, you have to pay to see more. This is similar to the way many bloggers sell  e-books. They give you a few pages or chapters for free, but you have to pay to get the rest.

I certainly won’t be one of NYT’s paying customers. While I read the occasional article, I mainly follow big news and the occasional Thomas L. Friedman column. I doubt I would ever go over 20 articles in a month and if I did, I would just stop reading. Also, I access the Internet from multiple devices, so I don’t know how well they could enforce the twenty page ban on me anyway. I’m sure there are far more avid readers of the paper than I though, and it will be interesting to see whether they convert these readers into paying customers or alienate their core audience. Which one would you bet on?

No site or service besides Google has sent me more traffic than StumbleUpon. In fact, well over a half million hits have come my way through the StumbleUpon service. At some point, when I was more dedicated to building traffic, I actually spent a lot of time trying to increase my StumbleUpon profile, but I have since learned to just let the service do it’s magic.

The beauty of Stumbleupon is that it is simple. People either give a page (usually an article) a thumbs up or a thumbs down. The more thumbs up you get, the more traffic Stumbleupon sends your way using the “stumble” feature that sends people to sites that the service thinks they will like.

The key to StumbleUpon success is to build pages people like. It’s just that simple. Unlike the methods for getting search engine traffic, you don’t need to stack an article with keywords or come up with some clever way to trick an algorithm. The people decide whether or not they like your articles. In general, judging by what has been popular on my site, stumblers like articles that are informative, funny, and/or help them to accomplish a goal. If you can produce articles that accomplish all three of these things, you’ve got a potential hit on your hands.

Assuming that you’ve been smart enough to join StumbleUpon and put a “Stumble This” link on your page, the rest of the process for getting hits is really just this simple:

1. Be funny
2. Be Informative
3. Help people accomplish a goal

Note: I wrote this article to be a part of the Brilliant Blogger Series at Blogworld blog. they include plenty of other links to great articles about Stumbleupon, which I am adding below.

Article Links from BlogWorld Blog:

• 4 Great StumbleUpon Alternatives To Discover New Sites by Damien Oh (@damienoh)
• 5 essential StumbleUpon power points by Blah, Blah! Technology (@blahblahtech)
• 7 Steps for Generating Free Traffic From Stumbleupon by Terry Dean
• 7 Tips for StumbleUpon Success by Ian Lurie (@portentint)
• 10 Simple Steps To Increase Blog Traffic Via StumbleUpon by Marko Saric (@markosaric)
• 28 Tips To Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar by Dharmesh Shah
• The 2008 Twitter StumbleUpon Experiment by Jacob Cass (@justcreative)
• Checking StumbleUpon Referrals and Reviews to specific URLs by Tony Adam (@tonyadam)
• Expanding StumbleUpon Network by Justin Germino (@dragonblogger)
• How StumbleUpon Traffic Is Bad For Your Blog by Nabeel
• How to increase StumbleUpon traffic? by Kevin Gibbons (@kevgibbo)
• How To Make A Blog Post Go Viral In StumbleUpon by Devash
• How to Use StumbleUpon and Make it Work for You by Evelyn Parham (@Evelyn_Parham)
• How to use StumbleUpon to Effectively Generate Traffic by Brendan van Son (@brendanvanson)
• How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote by David Risley (@davidrisley)
• How to Write Posts That Set StumbleUpon on Fire by Skellie (@skellie)
• Interview with Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon Co-Founder by Allen Stern (@centernetworks)
• The Most Useful StumbleUpon Feature You May Not Have Known by MohsinNaqi (@MohsinN)
• Never Trip in Link Building with StumbleUpon by Sam (@iacquire)
• The Past, Present and Mobile Future of StumbleUpon with CEO Garrett Camp by Frank Gruber (@FrankGruber)
• The Raw Power of StumbleUpon by Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan)
• Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign For Your Blog by Darren Rowse (@problogger)
• StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp On The Downside To Getting Our News On Facebook by Bianca Bosker (@bbosker)
• The StumbleUpon Experiment by Dan Grossman (@djg)
• StumbleUpon Etiquette Guide and Best Practices by Tamar Weinberg (@tamar)
• StumbleUpon for Dummies by Mark Kuiper (@marcofolio)
• StumbleUpon: It’s NOT About the SEO! 4 Compelling Reasons to Become a Heavy StumbleUpon User by Neal Schaffer (@NealSchaffer)
• StumbleUpon Responds To Nick Denton: We’re Actually No. 1 For Social Traffic by Ben Popper (@benpopper)
• StumbleUpon Sucks by Eric
• StumbleUpon Users… Be Careful What You Stumble by Brent Csutoras (@brentcsutoras)
• The StumbleUpon Digg Experiment by JD Rucker (@0boy)
• Targeting StumbleUpon Users by Daniel Scocco (@danielscocco)
• Things To Know About StumbleUpon [INFOGRAPHIC] by Amelia Chen
• Ultimate Guide to Using StumbleUpon by Slick Affiliate (@SlickAffiliate)
• Visualing StumbleUpon Top Users and Their Friends by Chris (@chris_smt)

To all those people who write me every week asking for a link exchange,

First off, thank you for telling me what a wonderful blog I have. It would mean more if you actually knew my name or had some grasp of the subject matter of my blog, but I appreciate the nice words. In fact, I appreciated them the first time I heard them, many, many emails ago when I got this form letter for the first time. Thank you, as well, for letting me know that links improve page rank. You really opened my eyes with that revelation.

I know your time is valuable. If you didn’t have time to write a personal note to me, the person you want to exchange links with, then you must be quite busy. I just wanted to let you know a few things so that I can save you some trouble:

• If you’re going to ask for a link from my website, which features my name and picture prominently, don’t start your request with “Dear Madam/Sir”.
• I don’t do link exchanges.
• Nobody I know does link exchanges.
• Your site has nothing to do with my site.
• Your site is filled with links to other sites, so the link you would give me would really mean nothing.
• Dozens of other people already asked me the same question, and it has yet to work.
• Since you clearly don’t read my site, there’s not much point in continuing this letter.

Thank you for your time,

John Hewitt

As a technical writer, I’ve used a lot of different programs to create books. For years, FrameMaker has been the standard for technical publications, as well as a variety of other types of books. One the opposite end, Microsoft Word has a reputation for being the least loved solution for anything more complicated than a novel. It gets used because everyone has it, not because everyone wants it.

In many ways, this reputation is deserved. I’ve used Word since version 4 for the Mac back in 1989. In the old days, it had so many problems with glossaries and footnoting that it made you want to pull your hair out. Its table of contents feature seemed to have a mind of its own and adding graphics was a recipe for disaster.

Believe it or not, Microsoft Word has come a long way in the past few years. I still wouldn’t use it for the thousand page monsters I used to build for Intel, but frankly those beasts even made FrameMaker have fits. More importantly, FrameMaker is powerful, but nobody ever bothered to make it easy to use. The learning curve for FrameMaker is ridiculous. Frankly, they could learn a few lessons from Word 2010, which has done an excellent job of  putting powerful tools at your fingertips.

That doesn’t mean you won’t have a lot to learn if you want to do a book properly. I suggest you start with How to Format Books in MS Word, a nice introduction to the concepts over at the Technical Communication Center.

In general, people don’t like surprises. They especially don’t like to be surprised when they click on a link. Cia Romano over at Interface Guru recently wrote about click surprise, and how it can hurt your online business.  Click surprise happens whenever you click on a link and get something other than what you were expecting. In the e-commerce world this happens far too often.

• The user clicks on an item they want to buy but instead gets routed to a page full of different merchandise.
• The user clicks on “more information” and gets routed to a sales pitch or a form.
• The user clicks on the OK button to complete a transaction, only to be asked to give additional information.

Click surprise isn’t just limited to ecommerce sites. Any time you give a customer, visitor or user something other than what they expected, that’s click surprise. If the user click on a headline that promises more information than it delivers, that’s click surprise. If the user clicks on a link (on site or off) and gets an error, that’s click surprise. Each time it happens, you run the risk of alienating the user.

The solution is simple. Deliver what the user expects. Always be honest. If you think you have to fool the user to get a sale, then you are probably selling the wrong thing.

I blog for a living. This isn’t the easiest of tasks. Sure, I do a bit of freelancing as well, but my blog has to pay the bills. That’s why there are ads on my site. When you run ads on a site, you have to live with a few realities. I’ve decided to discuss them briefly so that other bloggers can benefit from my ten years of dealing with site advertising.

Your readers hold you responsible for your advertisers

Readers associate your ads with your blog and with you as a blogger. This is true of blogging more than most mediums. People don’t blame the TV show when an annoying ad runs. Late night TV, no matter how good the individual show, is rife with scam advertising and ads targeted at every vice you can think of. In the daytime, every feminine bodily function has an ad, accompanied by ads for pills that inevitably list death or coma as a side effect. No one blames the shows. On a blog though, if the people don’t like your advertiser, they don’t like you. This is life as a blogger. There’s no use complaining about it. You just need to understand it.

Internet advertising is a mess

There are dozens of ad networks and thousands of affiliates all with varying rules and payouts. Every one of them claims to have the answer to your advertising needs, but finding non-biased comparisons of what they all do and who is best for you is virtually impossible. Trial and error is the only way to sort the good from the bad, and there are certainly more bad networks than there are good ones. This leaves you with the option of approaching advertisers directly, which can sometimes be lucrative but means a lot of effort. Occasionally, advertisers will get you up and running within hours but most take months of negotiation. Other than word of mouth, it’s hard to figure out who or what to try.

Pay is slow

In the Internet advertising world, getting paid within sixty days of a conversion is considered fast. I have some advertisers who pay quarterly, with a thirty day delay for “processing” after the end of the quarter. That means that a conversion that happens on January 1st won’t result in money getting sent to me until April or even May.

Ads are ugly

I’m no design expert, but I like to keep my site design clean and ads are almost never clean. They come in different sizes, shapes, and colors (but never in the ones you are looking for). Ads are designed to get attention, and you don’t get that by fading into the background. I’ve turned down some potentially lucrative ads because I thought they were too ugly for my site. I’ve also dealt with an advertiser who insisted on running the exact same ad more than once on the page, and then complained because the conversions were low.

Frauds and scams are everywhere

I am approached by potential advertisers constantly. The problem is that 99% of them are pushing some sort of scam. Few of them even seem to have stopped and taken the time to understand what my site is about. They send the same email to hundreds or thousands of site owners. Many don’t even take the time to learn my name of the name of my site. They want me link to their get rich quick scheme or some other equally inappropriate site or service. Not only don’t I want their ads on my site, but I wouldn’t trust them to pay me anyway. The scent of scam is all over them.

These are the realities of Internet advertising in 2010. Keep them in mind if you are planning to monetize your own blog.

Litany Against Fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert – Dune

Writers have many fears:

• They fear submissions because they might lead to rejections
• They fear rejection because it might mean that they are wasting their time
• They fear criticism because it might mean they aren’t good enough
• They fear money because it might mean they’ve sold out
• They fear the blank page or screen because they might not be able to fill it
• They fear deadlines because they might not be able to meet them
• They fear publishers and agents because they are difficult to approach
• They fear public readings because it means they have to be the center of attention
• They fear success because it means they have to repeat it

Here are some things to try when fear is keeping you from doing something.

• Write down your worst case scenario. Be realistic. After that, write down the best possible outcome. Be realistic about that as well. Determine if the risk is worth the reward. It usually is.
• Make a plan. Your fear often grows when you are unsure of how to proceed. When you know the next step, you can concentrate on that rather than the entire problem.
• Listen to the things you are telling yourself. Decide if your fears are realistic and proportional to the situation. Don’t get caught up in negative self-talk.
• Take a moment (or longer) to relax. If you find that you are getting stressed about an issue, it is time to take a break. This is a good time to meditate if you find that helps you.
• Contact someone who has succeeded in doing what you are trying to do. Get their advice.
• Concentrate on what you are supposed to do. Put other people’s reactions out of your mind. Focus strictly on the tasks you have set for yourself.
• Listen to an inspirational speech. I have provided a number of them for you in a single package below.

For the Serious

For the fun

I know quite a few people who can write well, but aren’t writers. They have the skill to write, but they lack the persistence to make it a career. Writing is a skill that most people have to some extent or another. There are plenty of people who don’t care about writing at all that can still do it well. They had good teachers in school and the learned what they were taught. That doesn’t mean they want to do anything with writing specifically.

It takes more than desire

The more problematic set of people are the ones who want to be writers, but don’t write. They like to read books and think about writing one. They like to watch movies and think about being a screenwriter. They have the desire, but they do nothing with it. Even if they do write that novel or screenplay, they don’t really see it through to completion. They don’t edit it until it is perfect. They don’t write a second one to build up their skill. They have enough willpower in them for one work, but not enough to make writing a career.

Easy isn’t always good

Willpower and persistence matter more than talent in most fields, and especially in writing. In fact, having a natural skill can sometimes be a hindrance. When a skill comes to a person naturally, that person often has less desire to improve. When I was in elementary school I was a math wiz. I could add, subtract, multiply and divide in my head easily and always got the best grades. When it came time to take algebra though, math suddenly became hard for me. At that point, I needed to try much harder, but I was used to not having to make an effort. I got average grades and moved on to other things. I wasn’t looking for a challenge. I just wanted to be good at it.

Sooner or later it gets tough for everyone

The same is true of people who are great at the basics of writing. A person with perfect grammar and an excellent vocabulary can write well, at first. It gets hard for them though, when they actually have to put 70,000 words together into a novel that makes sense and engages the reader. It gets hard when they have to write a heartfelt poem. It gets hard when they have to write a direct-mail advertisement that brings in customers. It gets hard when they have to write a one-hundred page guide to using a piece of software. People who have had to work at their writing though, and know they need to improve, are more likely to be up to one of those challenges. They know going in that it is going to be hard.

Writing is only the first hard step

To embrace writing as a career you need to be persistent. The pay isn’t always great and the work isn’t always interesting. Writing 70,000 words is hard. Editing 70,000 words is excruciating. Having somebody tear apart those 70,000 words and tell you it is not good enough is devastating. The career in writing belongs to the person who gets up the next day and gets back to work, either improving what they have or creating something new.

Building a writing career

If you want a career as a writer, you need to push yourself. You need to write when there are a dozen distractions, both pleasant and unpleasant. You need to see projects through to completion. You need to bounce back from criticism and even learn from it. You need to care about writing enough to stick with it through a hundred bad times, or you need to let it go. There is no shame in writing strictly as a hobby. There is no reason you can’t write for fun. There are easier and even more rewarding careers out there. If you want writing to be your career though, be prepared to push through the difficult parts and see where your path takes you.

Capturing a publication’s attention can be a difficult task. You are competing against a variety of other people, causes and events. To win this competition you must do two things. First, you must gain their interest. Second, you must present your story in a professional manner that will make it easy for them to give you the coverage you desire. Here are some tips to help you send effective press releases.

Know Your Target

Find out who the publication’s editor / reporter / blogger is for the section you want your press release to appear in. Include that person’s name on the press release, not just on the envelope or in the email address.

Pick One Person Per Publication

Once you’ve chosen the appropriate person, stick with them. If the article needs to be passed off to another reporter, the publication will make that decision. If you send your press release to more than one person, any problems that develop from duplicate coverage and effort will be blamed on you.

Don’t Just Send, Call

To increase your chances of getting coverage, call the intended recipient before you send the press release and call a few days later to make sure they received it. Making first contact by phone will also help you find the appropriate person to send your press release to.

Give it Time

Don’t email a press release the day before an event and expect your event to receive coverage. Give the maximum possible amount of time for the publication to decide how they want to cover the story. If you feel the event is so far in the distance that they might forget about it, then simply send another release as the time for the event draws nearer.

Know Your Deadlines

Magazines, even weekly ones, are planned months in advance. Seasonal events such as Christmas and Thanksgiving are great examples of this. Holiday issues are frequently developed in the heat of summer. For calendar items, know when the publication’s submission deadline is. Do your research.

Keep it Short and Informative

Reporters and editors are notoriously busy. Most press releases should be kept to a single page. Two pages is acceptable but not optimal. If the publications want more information, they’ll ask.

Write it in a News Style

Put the primary information (who, where, what, and when) into the lead (first paragraph), and avoid a heavy sales pitch. No exclamation points!!! Use short words and sentences. Make sure what you’re saying is very clear. Many publications will directly reprint a press release, as long as it is written in a professional news style. Buy either the AP Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style, and learn the general guidelines for abbreviating words, writing numbers and capitalizing names.

Use Postal Mail or Email

You should check with each publication to find out their preferred system for receiving press releases. In general, email is acceptable and postal mail is fine. Faxes are hard to read or to include photos with, so avoid faxing.

Help keep it Together

For printed press releases, always include, at the top corner of every page, a two or three word description of the story, the name and contact information of key contact people (no more than two), the page number (if there is more than one page) and the release date (usually “for immediate release” or “please hold until ??/??/??”). For emails, include this information at the beginning of the email. Be aware that most people will hit the reply button to respond to an email, so send your press release from an email address that you will be able to follow up from.

Show and Tell

If you have good photos, send them or include the words “photos available upon request” with your information at the top of the first page. Only send high quality photos, however, and only when they add to your story. Place photos between cardboard when mailing. Don’t tape or paper clip the photos or you risk damaging them.

Make it Easy on the Eyes

Use standard 8 1/2″x 11″ paper typed on one side only. Never break a paragraph across two pages. Leave wide margins for editors to write notes in. A 1 1/2″ or 2″ margin on each side is fine. Also, use a standard font; fancy text may look nice, but it is hard to read.

Dress for Success

Don’t fold your press release like a letter. You should fold it so that the headline and date will be the first thing the editor or reporter sees upon opening the envelope.

All Good Press Releases Must Come to an End

End a press release with either “###” or ” -30-” typed across the center of the page, three lines below the end of your text. If a release has greater than one page, type “-more-”, centered at the bottom of the pages preceding the final page.