Earning Money

As most of you can probably see, I took a few days and just did not blog. There are a few reasons for that. The first is that school started again and I was doing a few things like meeting up with some old friends and getting together with an important person that I had wanted to see for a while. So, I just took a break. However, there was more to me taking this break than me just not blogging for a few days. The one thing that you’ll find as you blog more and more is that your blogs are constantly on your mind. I am always thinking of new blog posts and new things to write about.

There is the common misconception that if you don’t blog every single day on the day without a delay and with no failures (run on sentence, I know) you won’t succeed. I dare say that’s a lie. You can go a day or two or even three days without blogging and your readers will still be your readers. They’re not going to ditch you just because you took a break. I can tell you from my own personal experience that I don’t remove someone’s site from my RSS feed until they haven’t updated in like two or three weeks. Three days? That’s no big deal.

That brings me to the point of this blog post. Taking a break can sometimes provide you that necessary time to recharge your brain. We are writers when we blog. Constantly updating things and making more blog posts and writing and writing and writing can drain us considerably. Add the fact that, chances are, you’re either a student or you work a full time job and you’re just plain tired. But still, we blog as much as we can, but from time to time, we just need a break. And that’s what I suggest to you. Take a break because if you do, you’re giving your brain time to recharge and when you do come back with that recharged brain, you can suddenly burst out with a huge energy and get a lot of work done.

For instance, let’s assume that you run three blogs regularly like I do and that you also do content writing like I do and other occassional things. That’s a lot of blog posts to write. That’s a lot of content to write. After a while, you go blank. I suggest you take a day, step away from the computer, sit down and just read a book or play a video game. Me? I played guitar for hours on end with my friends; I learned entire songs and truth be told, allowed my writing side to recover while my more creative, musical side took control. Three days later, I have the energy and the concentration to get blog post after blog post done.

But, here’s another question: do I have to take three days off? No. Take three hours off. Or even just take an hour off. If you are constantly blogging all day long and you stop for a little while and do something that is not connected to that part of your brain, it’ll give you time to recover. Hell, it might even give you time to find more blog posts without even realizing it. I wrote a blog post once about earning on the web and comparing it to guitar. I took something that I liked, that I took a break from working to enjoy for an hour or two, and suddenly had a blog post idea. A few hours and I was able to find something to write about.

The key to taking a break is disconnecting yourself, for some time, from your work. People do it all the time. That’s one of the big reasons companies offer vacations. If you don’t give your body time to recover, you’re going to go crazy. So, I suggest taking a break, whether it is a few hours or a few days. There is nothing wrong with just saying, “my work can wait, I need to relax.” Will you lose a little traffic? Sure. My Alexa dropped 3K. But you know what? It’ll go back up once again once people see that I am not really leaving. I recommend taking a little bit of a break. The break will help you to recover and work more effectively. Try it. You’ll like it.

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Although I have never run a contest on this blog, about a week ago, I agreed to sponsor another contest with the hopes of getting some links back to this blog. And it really has worked. I talked about how a contest could really help you out with your site if you planned it accordingly. So, holding a contest could be an incredible way to get traffic. However, there are times when you just don’t have the money necessary to get a big enough contest. I mean, it’s not easy to afford a Wii or an X-Box 360 or something like that. But, why do you need to offer such a huge prize? Or, better yet, why do you need to offer such a huge prize alone?

What I am suggesting is something that numerous people have done in the past. Set up a contest with two or three different people. If you’re looking to offer an X-Box 360, get three people to each chip in money to afford it and then voila, you have got promotion for cheaper. Now, there is debate over whether this is good or bad because now there will be three sites being linked to in each contest post on other blogs rather than just one. Yes, it does have its negatives. You’re not getting the sole attention of potential readers. However, when you’re a small time blogger and you can’t afford big prizes, sometimes you need to step back and be willing to lose a bit of attention to gain more in the end. Offering a big prize will get more submissions than offering a little prize.

Now, there are ways to get around losing out on the traffic. One thing that I would recommend is offer a point system. Each point is like a number in a hat. So, if I were to hold a contest with two other people, this is what I would use as the point system and the number of points that I would give each portion. Check it out, use it if you want and if you’d rather use your own system, go right ahead. But, here’s what I’d do:

• Ten points for writing a blog post about the contest.
• Two points for commenting on each blog that is part of the contest.
• Five points for subscribing to each person’s RSS feed.

So, in a sense, with three people, someone could walk away getting 21 potential numbers in the hat. Now, that’s a lot of submissions. However, the thing to remember is that you’re going to be getting a link back to your blog, guaranteed traffic because they need to visit each blog to comment on each blog and you’re getting comments which is nice. But, above all, you’re getting guaranteed RSS subscriptions. Now that is a nice thing. RSS subscriptions is how bloggers can determine how strong their blog is and frankly, we could all use a large RSS subscription. So, that’s what I would do if I was setting up a contest with two other people.

But, what about a huge contest with 12 groups of five different people? What then? That brings me to a contest that I am participating in. If you check out this One Heck of a Contest, you’ll see that in group seven, Dorm Earning is offering 250 Entrecard points. Is that a good prize? Eh, it’s moderate. It allows someone, though, to get some good advertising on people’s blogs and that is why I offered it. Am I getting a lot of links from it? I sure am. That is the great thing about the contest. I am getting a ton of links that will hopefully help me with my page rank, but above all, it is helping my technorati. For me, to continue seeing upward progress and by offering something that is not costing me a penny, it’s a great deal.

So, there are some great benefits to making a contest with more than just you involved. You can get some great links and if you set it up right, you could get a considerable amount of traffic and some easy RSS subscribers. I intend on holding future contests with other people because, hey, I’m a college student, my wallet isn’t that deep. But, I really recommend it. Get a sponsor. Whatever you do, it’s alright to do it with multiple people. If you want to do the above contest, you’ve got plenty of time and I really think you all have a chance to win something. There are some really awesome prizes available. But, check it out and try it out yourself. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in the results.

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