problogger

Freelancing Week 2: A Good Start

Well, today is Monday which marks week number 2 of my freelancing journey. So far, I’m off to a great start with two articles already published, an interview lined up, show notes for both podcasts adjusted, a few administrative tasks done and I’ve made a few comments on some blog posts. Seems like a productive start to the week. It will get even better once my second guest post is published on Problogger which is nothing more than a review of Sphere. Hoping this post does as well as the first. I’ll try to get things straightened out around here during the weekend.

Now I am off to bed at 9:36 AM hoping that I wake up at about 3PM to grab a shower and spend the evening with my girl.

Before I let you go, I wanted to share something with you and would like your input. I wrote about this on Performancing but I’ll share it here as well. I came across a post in Twitter which made me pause and think for a moment.

definetheline: The weekend used to mean ‘no work’. Now it means ‘stop working on the things you don’t want to do, and work on the things you want to do’.

Let me know if this sounds like the weekend to you.

Un Authorized Syndication

A post over at ProBlogger.net is asking the following question: “Is syndicating content kosher or not…ie running someone elses content through rss into ones own blog?” And the answer to that varies depending on the circumstances. For starters, I feel that no website should be able to syndicate my full RSS feed while at the same time, displaying some sort of advertising on the page/site. This makes me think the webmaster of the site in question is trying to profit from my work. There is an exception to the rule however.

So you may ask then, what about blog scrapers who simply use an excerpt of the post but usually have the name of the post author switched around. Well, they actually link back to the original post most of the time and I’m not hard pressed to go after those that use an excerpt. Using excerpts is fine, using the full feed is not. I don’t syndicate anyone’s content without permission and it’s very unlikely I’d do so anyways.  However, I am completely fine with sites who syndicate my content, only after they have received my permission to do so. An excellent example of this would be Planet WordPress managed my Ozh. Before syndicating my WordPress related content, Ozh got in touch with me and asked if he could syndicate the WordPress category on my blog in which I gave him permission to do so.

So how do you feel about those who syndicate your full RSS feed without permission? Do you syndicate content from other people on your own site?

Which Internet Celebrity Are You?

Technosailor has put together a self importance test that will analyze how important you think you are. After completing the test, I found out that I am most like Darren Rowse of Problogger.com Imagine that! Here is what the result actually states:

I am most like Darren Rowse

Well, I’ll agree with the fact that I like to help other bloggers when I can. Just the other day, I was participating in the end of a podcast and ended up talking to two other bloggers for an hour, giving them some tips and tricks. I honestly don’t participate in many social networking services and I don’t turn everyone in the world into my friend. So it’s nice that I apparently have some of the same qualities as Darren, but will I ever make as much income as Darren? That’s the question I want to know.

Let me know which internet celebrity you turn out to be.

ProBlogger Interviews SEObook Author

Problogger.com LogoDarren Rowse of Problogger.com has published the first of a two part interview he conducted with Aaron Wall, author of the eBook, SEObook. In this interview, Aaron answers questions pertaining to link building strategies. Below is a sample of the interview.

When it comes to building links to a blog – do you recommend bloggers buy links, ‘use’ social media sites, trade links, linkbait, something else…. or some combination of the above?

I say try everything and see what works best for you. You might come across a trick that I haven’t used much that works well for you given your personality and your market.

One other thing I would probably add is that for most people it is probably not going to be worth it to spend tons and tons of time building up a social media account on a large generalist website. If you only have a few hours a day to spend online then you should spend most of that reading and participating on sites specifically about your topic, or writing your site.

Be sure to check out part one of the interview as it contains quite a few helpful tips.