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1. Talk about typical and non-typical topics because of believing in them

   This is one of my greatest skills, and it is also one of my greatest weaknesses. The benefit? I can talk about things that can affect individuals and corporations, both typical and non-typical, both big and small, since I believe that both big and small things affect us all. The downside? Venturing off in different directions appears to be a form of “not having a clear focus” to many readers, and patience is something that is usually replaced by the need to find out things right away, even by myself.

   I like blogging about random topics and revolving them around certain themes. Take your own personal life as an example: when you live your life, you revolve everything in your life around your understanding of things, even if your understanding prompts you to be considerate of everyone else. Similarly, I believe that any blogging topic out there can be taken and applied to any kind of a belief you may have, or revolved around any topic.

   That is why I try to revolve the most random things around certain key elements, like reason.

   Many people seem to be doing the same thing, going from one topic to another, while not aiming at a certain thing. Many of such people are simply trying to get their post count up. Kudos to them!

2. Revolve the blog around readers

   I am not here to vent my emotions. I am here to vent my emotions into your thoughts and feelings. I am not desperate to be heard in the online word, so everything I write, I write to communicate something with you. Venting about something means to vent something off your chest; I am here to convey an understanding instead. Therefore, even though the topics are all mine, I want to show them to you so that you will understand the message I am trying to convey to you. That is why my blog revolves around both me and you.

   The downside of such an approach? Money. It is hard to make money when your blog revolves around bringing up topics that you think are good and practical for you and your readers. Otherwise, I can start talking about a 100 ways to make money through your blog every week, and I will start getting a lot of sponsors too. Maybe I can simply talk about one single way to make money every week to keep many parties happy, no?

   Many people think that saying “My blog is not possible without readers like you” is enough to show any kind of a bond or an appreciation, even when no other element on their blog appreciates readers. Most bloggers write about topics that please their advertisors or the companies, networks and groups they are affiliated with.

3. Respond to all comments, using a brain

   I have been trying to respond to all comments for several years now. Sometimes I respond to comments via e-mails, taking the discussion away from the blog and continuing it through e-mails. Most of the time, I will reply to each and every individual comment, not only to acknowledge a comment but to actually communicate with a person. I think communicating with all commentors on The Reasoner is something I can do blindfolded now.

   Why? Because I hate it when I write a long comment on someone else’s site, and they respond with only a “Thank you for your comment. ” Such comments simply tell me that a blogger feels obligated to reply to each comment, without actually communicating with me. Either do not reply, or stop using the same copy-paste responses to every comment you get. Maybe I should start a list outlining all the bloggers who look stupid trying to treat comment responses as an obligation.

4. I like keeping the number of posts on my site down

   I do not believe in outputting as many posts as possible in order to attract readers and advertisors and search engines. I want to attract others by the actual value that helps people, and not by promises that something may help people. That is why sometimes I can write 2 posts a day for months, and then I will slow down and write a post a week. What I write is more important to me than how much I write. People who write a lot of posts regularly usually tend to write things to lure in people. Some people who actually write a lot while giving value back to the readers are simply amazing. They exist, but they are hard to find. One place you can find them is in my bookmarks menu, though I remember their blog addresses by heart.

   In contrast, I try to keep my post count growth rate down. I got an offer last month to have a small ad placed on my site for $450 a month if I post an article everyday for at least 6 months, the way I have already been doing for a few months now. I declined the advertising offer, telling the advertisor to let me know if they would like to place an ad on my site if they did not have a posting schedule requirement. Since then, I have instead started posting less and running a poll asking you about the frequency of published posts you would like to see here. Why? I think it is a waste of my time to post a 100 posts in 2 months when only 5 of those posts get the message across. I feel the need to combine the ideas, thoughts, and pack a lot of punch into any post I write, so that each and every post gets attention and I get all my ideas and message across. Maybe I am currently quite satisfied eating 2 pieces of bread and drinking a glass of milk every day, using money earned in the offline world?

   For me, having a few nice posts is better than having a 100 useless posts that only aim to lure in people so that more money can be made. Money to go retire can be made easily by fooling people, but building legends, fortunes, relationships and brands takes a long time, and requires doing something realistic so that people in both the short and the long term, even when you are not around anymore, will say “Wow, he/she did help me! What a memory!” That is why I like working with companies which aim to build a brand through legacy, and to make money at the same time, and not companies which are only around to make money quickly. When you aim to build a brand or have a legacy, you tend to care more about other people, even if you love making money.

5. Value content over looks

   I believe that if one had to choose, content is more important than design. However, in reality, it seems that most human beings prefer something that appears nice instead of something that is ugly but has actual value. That is why even with design changes, my writing maintains a lot of the same philosophy of feelings in my content, even if the topics keep on changing. For me, content comes first, and if I have time, I work on the design slowly. Sure, looks can be important as Darren from ProBlogger argues, but without content, looks are usually used only to deceive people and to make some money. If someone can manage to have both quality content and a quality design on their blog, I think that person has a very nice diamond that they should utilize fully, quickly and carefully, to ensure that they are able to communicate with as many blog readers as possible and get their message across efficiently and effectively.

   Why? Maybe it is human nature, to be attracted to things that appeal to any of our senses, or our thoughts and feelings. It is important to present things nicely, since we are all like babies. You can get many babies to eat the toxic veggies if you act nice and talk in a friendly manner, but you will have a hard time getting the same babies to eat the veggies if you are dressed as a bigfoot and you keep growling at the top of your voice. The value you offer, the vegetables, are still the same, but for the baby, your presentation and your looks also becomes part of the content.

   Maybe I want us all to be non-typical babies?

So there you have it; a really nice bragging post. Among the thousand other things [haha], the above 5 are some of the common things that many bloggers try to copy from The Reasoner. Some give credit, some do not give credit, and some have come up with their own versions of similar ideas on their own.

Whatever the reason may be, I hope this list helps you improve some aspect of your blogging or life. I also hope that if you have any suggestions for any of these things, you can let me know so I can improve.

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If a site tries hard to appear in the top search results, it better provide better content too

Let us take a hypothetical situation. If I see ProBlogger appearing first in search results when searching for the words “Make money online”, and I notice the quality of content on Problogger is inferior compared to the content on JohnChow.com, I will think that Darren Rowse, owner of ProBlogger, simply focused on getting higher listing on search engines instead of coming up with better content than other sites like JohnChow.com.

Why? Because I would notice that his content, in this hypothetical example, is of lesser importance, value and quality compared to other sites which do not rank high on search engines. I would also think the same thing for JohnChow.com, if his site appeared higher in search results compared to other sites but provided content of lesser value, or content that has already been discussed elsewhere compared to other sites which have unique and more useful content.

Of course, as you get more popular, people tend to agree more with you. Reading a post about having good anchor text on hundreds of new blogs on the internet for the last 5 years does not spark much interest in some people, while those very people jump to commenting with great excitement because of someone like John Chow bringing up the same point. I wonder if some people are simply looking to praise anything written on prominent blogs instead of focusing on what is being said and why it is being said.

What do I think of JohnChow.com?

As for me, I initially started reading John Chow’s site because of his humor and the way he discussed random things that he wrote about so well. As time passes, his blog is focusing more and more on being commercial, full of reviews and stuff related to making money. I guess directions change from time to time. Even my site has gone from being completely personal and talking about everything to being a blend of personal thoughts and public trends, among several other things.

As long as John Chow’s site has something that does not focus solely on making money or commercial marketing, I will continue to be a reader. He writes well and in my view, with honesty, and when he jokes, it is good. As for ProBlogger, in my view, I like Darren Rowse being honest and transparent in his posts, and for addressing the issues of making money and commercial marketing well through direct and indirect ideas and thoughts. I will continue to be his reader also.

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Emergency posts and scheduled posts help avoid bloggers block

Both emergency posts and scheduled posts address the issue of a Bloggers Block. With emergency posts, you write a post everyday and if you cannot come up with a topic to write about, you pick one of your emergency posts to post for that day. In contrast, by scheduling posts in advance, you write posts for each day of the week in advance, and let the posts be automatically published on specific days by your blogging software.

Scheduling written posts allows you to relax and not worry about coming up with topics to write about within a day. With your free time, you can slowly plan and start working on further scheduled posts for the future weeks. You can even reread the posts you have already written and scheduled to be published in order to improve and clarify them further before they get posted.

Do things early for your business and personal life

You can apply the concept of scheduled posts to other activities in your life also. If you have a business project, start it early and take it slow. You may need a lot of time later to solve any issues. For example, if you have a deadline for finding out elements that affect communication between different departments within a company, you may run into unexpected issues while doing the project. Starting things in advance will let you know what you need in order to accomplish your tasks and address any problems earlier instead of later at the last minute.

Similarly, if you want to accomplish a personal goal, do not wait till the last hour to start your activity, even if you think you can accomplish your goal without any issues. Start early so you can have less stressful time in the end. For example, if you have a goal of reading 50 pages every night before midnight, having 3 pages to read just before midnight will be less stressful than having 20 pages. The less things you have to do near a deadline to accomplish a task effectively, the more productive and less stressful you will feel.

Start things in advance to be more effective and less stressed

If you start things in advance, you get a better idea of what things should be done and how those things should be done. Starting things early will allow you to encounter any problems in the early stages of your efforts, which in turn will allow you to correct any mistakes and solve any issues well ahead of any deadline. You can then realize whether or not you should start doing more things early, or if you can simply wait and accomplish your tasks slowly without feeling any pressure.

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Successful people do not copy others

Successful people do not copy others, nor do they mimic the efforts of their role models. A dedicated person should already have an idea of what they want and how they want it in order to be able to learn from the mistakes and advice of others. That is where the role models come in: their mistakes and advices can help you in your blogging efforts. The very concept of a role model is there so you can learn things in order to help you with what you have already set your mind on doing. A role model is not supposed to dictate what you should do.

There is no “next” big thing

Many people who look up to other people for everything without trying something creative and unique on their own depend on others to lead the whole way. These people unfortunately believe in the widespread myth that they can be the next “something“, where that “something” is usually considered to be something like ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, IBM, Microsoft, Tupperware, Nokia, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino and many other entities which are considered icons by different groups of people for different reasons. The reality is that there will never be a “next” anything in this world.

Anything effective and successful is always unique. You cannot be the next-anything; you have to be you in order to develop your own icon and model that others can look up to. You can be successful in things you want to do, but if you want to copy someone in order to have the same success, you should start analyzing the nature of your goals. Chances are your goals will be similar to the goals of your role models since you initially copied their efforts with the hopes of achieving similar success.

I try to learn from many other people

Try to learn from the mistakes and success of others and apply such knowledge to your own plans and strategies. Be your own “next” thing if you absolutely cannot let go of the “next-something” myth. Mimicking and following others will only result in you looking to others for guidance for everything and forever. I do my best everyday to do something that I feel is my own work instead of doing something simply because someone successful is doing it. I do not automatically respect a site simply because a million other people respect that site. I observe sites for my own analysis and if I feel someone is sharing a thing that I can learn from, I appreciate that person and I apply the new knowledge to my own life and online efforts.

Take John Chow as an example for something I think I did that I did not need to do. These days, I somehow feel that choosing the “dot Com” as part of a new name for my site may have been influenced a bit because of John Chow [your fault John], whose site name is “JOHN CHOW DOT COM.” Thus I have been thinking lately of stripping that last part since “The Reasoner” name will suit me better. If I can realize that something was influenced by someone else when it doesn’t go along with what is good for me and my site, I think such realization is golden and I should address the situation and learn to avoid doing things without specific reasons, no matter how small they are.

I myself try to learn from many different people like Copyblogger, John Chow and Darren Rowse who runs Problogger. I also learn from almost every site in my links section, including Valerie, SP, Ronalfy, Daniel, Vera, Nicole, Sawai and many others. Help others and learn from them also. Apply small tips and help you observe from other bloggers you look up to in order to make your own blogging efforts better.

Learn from others to be successful in your efforts

Observe your role models for tips and advice you can apply to the blogging efforts you are already focusing on your own. That is the only way to succeed. Everything and everyone that has made a difference in this world, both online and offline, either has their own unique character and entity since the beginning, or they learnt to have a unique character and entity along the way by learning from others and their own efforts. Try to follow that principle as your role model and you will achieve a lot.

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When it comes to writing, the only thing that differentiates one form of writing from another is the level of passion that drives the writer into writing. The success of blogging depends on how much you enjoy it, and how well that enjoyment overrides any negative aspects of blogging. The enjoyment can exist in the form of your love for writing, your choice of the blogging platform, or appreciation from others in the form of comments from your readers. Andy from “Andy, ITGUY” recently realized that his passion for blogging paid back when his posted complaints about a certain company resulted in the founder of that company contacting him to see if the issues had been resolved. Sometimes achieving certain results can supercharge your passion for writing and result in an even higher appreciation for blogging compared to before.

Since many people usually stereotype against things that involve money, it is usually thought that a blog that focuses on earning money usually does not have any enjoyable passion behind it. In my opinion, blogging to earn money does not mean your blog may not have a driving passion behind or an enjoyable aspect to it. Darren from “ProBlogger” has explained that he blogs by having passion for both enjoying what he writes and earning money at the same time, depending on the writing topic. Blogging can take a lot of your precious time, but if you enjoy doing it regardless of whether it involves money or not, your posts will be different from all the other people who blog simply because they can, and your readers will appreciate that difference.

Even if your writing does not make enough money, as long as it satisfies that inner craving inside of you, your blog will reflect quality. Take James from Apple Matters; blogging takes a lot of his time and doesn’t earn him as much as his other jobs, but James enjoys blogging and thinks writing is fun. If you do not enjoy writing on your blog and you do not enjoy any other aspect of blogging, you are simply jumping on the blogging bandwagon. And like all other things in history that have people jumping on any bandwagon simply to mimic others, you will fail in your objectives unless you have an enjoyable passion that drives your efforts. Such an interest and passion will somehow be evident in the overall results of your blogging efforts.

When doing things that do not appear to attractive, if the results satisfy your passion for something, those things are worth pursuing. Take childbirth as an example. A friend of mine told me that even though having twins meant she had to endure the worst of pains, the fact that she loves kids means that she “would go through having kids again.” Blogging should have any form of an enjoyable driving passion behind it. That way, you can feel satisfied about blogging. Realizing the reasons you blog and figuring out the existence of any related passion will make you appreciate all the efforts you put into blogging. That realization can do wonders, as finding a passion for some aspect of blogging within yourself is like finding batteries within ourselves that get recharged simply by being discovered.

When you realize the reasons behind your blogging and the passion that drives you to blog, you will have a clear focus as to where you would like your blog to take you, and where you can take your blog to make that happen.

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