We have a lot of things we need to do – write a report, draw up a business plan, send an email, etc. Often these tasks aren’t that difficult, but for various reasons, we labor over them for hours, even days. One main culprit is excessive self-correction. It’s not a bad habit necessarily, but you’ll need to control the urge to edit or else you’ll never get anything finished. There’s a time to be critical and a time to let go.

When writing the first draft, be easy on yourself. Write down anything that comes to mind about the topic and do all the editing much later. Promising concepts will only be useful if you put them in black and white. At this time, you should just be concerned about having a large pool of ideas to draw from once you buckle down and get serious. Right now, keep your fingers away from that DELETE buttton. Remember: nobody will see this draft so it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Use this session as your chance to think about the whole project, from start to finish. See how you can bridge these two ends into one coherent piece. In effect, what you’re doing is building the foundations. It may not look pretty, but it’s strong and has plenty of support because you’ve looked at it from every angle. Once you commit all the details to paper for your first draft, give yourself a much needed break, then come back later with a fresh mind to start on the trimmings.

Facebook has always offered discussion forums in Facebook groups that cover a wide variety of subjects. Facebook groups are far superior to standalone discussion forums for two reasons:

• Micro niches – Facebook groups with micro niches can have success, whereas its less likely that there would ever be a standalone site with the niche. For example, University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management Class of 2011 Facebook group. Now, what are the odds that this niche could ever be satisfied without Facebook?
• Viral – The success for these groups/discussions depends on its ability to get users, and for Facebook, finding the targeted audience is easy. Through searches, invites, friends, and the news feeds, there are countless was these micro niche groups to have success. The chances of stand alone micro forums to find its targeted users is pretty unlikely.

Although these user created discussions on Facebook have been eating away at standalone forums, the new development of Facebook sponsored pages is what really indicates Facebook could replace the majority of forums. Facebook started creating pages for music artists similar to the iLike music application, and I think this is just a signal for what is to come. Soon, I see Facebook creating pages with forums for every interest on people’s profiles, like fly fishing, knitting, and under water basket weaving. If they start to partner with some of the big names in the content industry like BootsnAll for travel and Engadget for technology, Facebook discussion pages could earn instant credibility.  So essentially every topic could have a discussion forum on Facebook, which could definitely hurt many standalone forums.

Even though Facebook is positioning itself to be a monopoly of small communities and forums, I still think standalone forums can have some success if done correctly since they still have their own benefits, like transparency and a true sense of community. But if you are considering an investment in forums, I’d be a little more calculating and careful since Facebook may be trying to take your audience in the future.

All you have to do is nominate your blog at this link.

(As a content writer, sharing this may be bad for business, but the quality of the following tactics is not guaranteed – whether it’s for reader enjoyment, conversions, etc.  That, my friend, is totally up to your talents.  Of course, everything I mention below borders on plagiarism, so be warned.  If you’re not good at projecting your own voice and adding your own thoughts, use the following techniques with caution.)

•  Grab free articles from article directories and tweak them.  With a little creative use of a thesaurus and a “Find and Replace” tool, you’re on your way to having your own article.  Just insert your own sentences, phrases, and anecdotes from your personal experience.
• Look at blogs related to your topic, and copy important comments.  Blog readers who love to comment actually add to a blog’s content. Of course, don’t copy the comments outright – just the ideas.
• Ask existing users to contribute.  Duh.  A lot of websites do this. User created content is free and oftentimes engaging.  Plus, with the popularity of Web 2.0 business models, it’s so obvious that people like seeing themselves online – whether it’s through a byline, a video, or photos.  Ask them to send you a photo, list, or video they made related to your topic.  Voila! Instant content!
• Go to a chatroom about your topic.  Shoemoney (I think, I can’t remember for sure) does this.  He goes to a chat room, for example, about Ebook Publishing.  He asks a question related to his article “Where do I promote my ebook?”.  Guess what?  Everybody chimes in with their answers.  Of course, you need to verify the facts with more credible sources, but at least you have someplace to start.
• School essays.  You know the essays you have to write for school?  If you can hit two birds with one stone by writing on a topic related to your website, you’ve got a winner.  It’s free, original, and you get to do your homework at the same time.  Unless of course you just copied off of someone else…
• Guest postings.  Same as asking contributions from users.  If you have a blog, you can announce that you’re looking for guest posters.  In exchange, it’s customary to give guest writers at least a short bio on the post and a link to their own website.  But this only works if people are actually willing to guest post for you.

Now for the downsides.  Of course, these methods have their own “cons” attached to them.  Remember that nothing in this world is free – you have to pay one way or another.

•  Time.  Instead of attending to more important aspects of your web business, you’re tweaking existing words.  True, writing the articles yourself may take longer, but if you require a high volume of written content, I don’t think these methods are worth it.
• Quality.  Professional writing services often have an edge when it comes to quality – and it’s all from their education or experience.  They know how to make articles that convert better, encourage readership, and make readers want to click that “Digg it!” button.  If you can get a professional writer to post for free via the “Guest Postings” method, good for you!
• If you don’t do it right, it’s stealing.  Getting ideas using the above methods is one thing, but if you don’t modify the copied phrases enough, you’ll get into trouble.  You can avoid this by directly quoting the speaker and by being upfront with people that you’re collecting data for your site content.

The interview brings up an important question…what’s the best way to monetize online? Krug has a simple answer: e-commerce, hands down. If you’re looking for major upside, then go e-commerce. Content is easiest, but if you’re in it for the long haul, you get much less financial reward on a per hour basis.

What do you think? Does the long-haul belong to e-commerce over content? Or is there still room to become a Six Figure Blogger (are you jealous) like me;-)

Ryan,

You are currently in violation of Google’s Terms of Service by displaying images next to AdSense blocks. You also label a 300×250 Medium Square Box with the label: “Related Content” which is a violation of the ToS that you have agreed to in displaying the ads.

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/12/ad-and-image-placement-policy.html

I would suggest getting those pictures down, ASAP. Hope that link helps- It is the Adsense Blog from Google themselves.

I will give you 48 hours to correct these violations before reporting your site through the Google Adsense/Webmaster Group. Thank you for your compliance.

Doing my best to clean up “made for AdSense sites”,

Rob

Notice that at the end of the message, Rob accuses College Startup of being an MFA site. That’s a load of bullshit. I do experiment with AdSense on the site, but I make literally pennies off the site each month. College Startup is actually a labor of love. In the end, I really make no money off it when you consider domain name costs, hosting, etc.

But that’s not even the point. If Rob Conway really wants to clean up “made for AdSense sites” then why the hell doesn’t he target real MFAs rather than legit sites like College Startup.

I’m fuming right now…

But it also provides a huge opportunity for web entrepreneurs.

In fact, we’ve recently been doing consulting work with various businesses to help correct bad information Our hope is that by sharing our experiences, this article gives our readers another original business idea for how to make money on the web. We’re sure that there are 1000′s of businesses out there with this problem who could use your services.

Fixing information on the web isn’t easy. There are lots of factors working again you. For one, Google prefers old content to new content. Second, inertia has worked itself onto the web and many older sites have no interest in honoring your request to change the information they have about your client.

To give you a sense of what we’re up against, we’ll detail below the experience we’re having with one of our more challenging jobs at the moment.

College Startup was recently hired by the new owners of The Colonnade Inn to correct as much bad information on the internet as possible about the business. The Colonnade Inn has been owned by a variety of owners, and the transfer of ownership has not always gone as smoothly (or friendly) as one would hope. In the process, a lot of incorrect information has wedged itself onto the web.

Most notably, if you are looking for the contact information for The Colonnade Inn in Sea Isle City New Jersey you are just as likely to find the wrong phone number as the right one. When they call the wrong number, they still get an answering machine, leading them to believe they’ve left a message with the right organization, when in fact they haven’t! This is terrible, since so many vacationers these days are looking for information on the internet.

Our job is to fix this situation and make it much more likely that potential vacationers will find the right information.

However, the problem is exacerbated because the current webmaster and host for The Colonnade Inn is totally non-responsive. So, we’re getting no “on-page” help with our services. We can currently make no “on-page” changes. That sucks because if you notice, the front page of the site has literally no textual instance of the phrase “The Colonnade Inn.” We’re basically left to off-page strategies at this point.

Another complication is the fact that the previous owners never turned over the original domain for the business, and have proceeded to keep it up. As we all know, the Search Engines value age, and the old domain still yields power despite being totally useless.

There’s one more major challenge. This is an offline business that’s very niche. Finding high-authority, related web pages to link into site isn’t nearly as easy as you might imagine.

Our Plans To Correct Information

There are really two ways to correct information. Either change the old information, or create lots of new information so that the old information gets diluted and subdued. We’re taking both approaches going forward. Create new content with the right URL and the right contact information. Make it look like the authority site by linking with good anchor text from as many sites as possible.

1. We setup a Squidoo page on Sea Isle City, the location where the Colonnade Inn is found

2. We tried setting up an Wikipedia page on the Historic Colonnade Hotel, but failed. It was deleted within minutes. It was worth the try, however, because a Wikipedia page would have been golden.

3. We plan to use PRLeap and a variety of other press release services to announce the change of ownership at the Colonnade Inn and provide updated contact information

4. We plan to acquire as many authoritive travel, vacation and related-location based links as possible.

5. We plan to submit the site to as many new directories as possible

6. Finally, we plan to contact as many sites as possible who either have the wrong contact information or the wrong URL. Kudos to the Yahoo Directory for making the change within 24 hours of the request. Unfortunately, many of the smaller sites have been harder to get a hold of.

You know, it’s funny because I always thought, theoretically, that I knew the answer to this question. But now that I’m faced with a decision, I can’t make up my mind.

Here’s the deal. I have 180 600-800 word travel related articles. That’s 180 strong pieces of potential AdSense generating content.

The problem is that I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know whether to put it up in a slow trickle or whether to put it up all at once, or to put it up in a bunches of 20, or what.

So I’m leaving my decision in your hands. Tell me what I should do.

More than anything, I’ve realized that it’s easy to become boring. Each of us only has a limited set of experiences to draw from when writing. If you try to write outside of your range of experience, you’ll notice that the writing turns out flat and lifeless.

So lately, I’ve been thinking of ways to find truly unique content. Here are two of my new strategies.

1. Locate pre-existing content off the interwebs

Recently, I purchased the online rights to a 180 page travel journal documenting the exploits of a couple who literally traveled across the world. That’s something most of us only dream of doing. I figured that it was worth the investment to jump start a travel site that I’m co-developing over the next 3-5 years as an experiment in long-term content development.

Ok. So how do you locate offline content? Get the word out! That’s how I do it. I tell all my friends and family of my ambitions for becoming an online publisher and that I’m looking for stuff to publish online. Every now and then, someone comes to me with a suggestion. When I take the suggestion and use it, I pay the “finder” a 5-10% finder fee on the purchase price. So, in the case of the travel journal, I paid $1500 for the content and $100 to my friend for finding the content.

2. Find experts who aren’t already online

Offer to develop a blog or website for an expert in exchange for a 50% revenue cut. There are a multitude of experts who currently have no online outlet. Plus, a lot of online content isn’t written by experts. So, you very well may be able to break through the noise by getting an expert to create content for you.

Here’s the key: before you put any time into the site, create a “committment test” for the expert writer. Have them write at least 10 articles, or start them off with a bland blog design until they’ve proven that they’ll write over the long haul.

So far, I’ve discovered 3 top-notch experts who are consistent writers (a nurse, a psychiatrist and a gardener). So far, they are doing a fantastic job and creating totally unique content.

Ok. So how do you find experts? I’ll repeat myself. Get the word out! Network with people. Experts love to share their wisdom. All you need to do is give them an outlet and the support they need to keep going. Pretty soon, you’ll have a nice body of expert knowledge and you can feel good at the same time for being an enabler.

During the past three years, I’ve learned quite a bit about what and what not to do as a blogger. In this post, I want to share with you what I think is the key tip for successful long-term blogging.

Blogging Your Life

The key is to blog your life. Do you have a dog? Then start a dog blog. But don’t blog every day, or even every week. Blog when you have something to say about your dog experience.

Do you love video games? Then start a video game blog. But don’t blog every day, or even every week. Blog when you have something to say about your video game life. Get a new system (Wii, baby!) or a new game (Wii controlled Madden!)? Then blog about it.

Are you starting to get the point? Don’t force your writing. Blog about the things you know and care about. Keep an eye on your real life for blogging ideas. Pay attention to what’s important to you, and start blogs about those topics. Over a few years, you’ll have a portfolio of blogs that will have built some nice equity plus not been a hassle to maintain.

Aim to blog weekly, not daily

Unless you’ve got a very unique talent for keeping fresh on a daily basis, don’t burn yourself out by posting daily. In fact, some of the best blogs often only update a couple times a month. Did you know that PostSecret only updates once a week, yet it’s one of the top 10 most viewed blogs on the internet? Or, check out Chris Pearson’s fantastic blog. He only does a few posts each month, but each one is a gem.

Longer, more in-depth articles are better

Rather than quantity, totally focus on quality. This isn’t always easy, and we certainly don’t always live up to it here at College Startup, but it is a goal for the future. Make your posts meaty, and people will link to them and readers will keep coming back to them as references. Give tips that are meangingful and practical, and soon enough, you’ll find that you have a huge reader base that keeps checking back at your site…in other words, your aim should always be to establish yourself as an authority on your subject matter.

Keep yourself happy

In the end, the key to blogging over the long haul is keeping yourself interested and happy. Don’t burn yourself out. Post on a variety of topics that you find interesting. If you follow these simple tips, you’ll find that three years down the road, you’re just as pumped up about blogging as your were when you just got started.