Regaining Momentum By Any Means Necessary (Fish or Cut Bait?)

September 19, 2010 By 30 Comments

(Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes)

I checked in to Website In A Weekend a couple of days ago, as I was doing research on the After the Deadline plugin for the upcoming Tools chapter of Blog Post Engineering. I wanted to use the plugin to proofread a blog post.

Whitescreened! Disaster!

I didn’t waste any time. I went straight to FTP and started deleting plugins. Once I had all the little used plugins deleted, I started from the top down with All In One SEO and laid waste. If you were wondering about a slightly off-kilter look, that’s part of it.

This morning, I reinstalled BPE KISS Kit, Comment Luv, Contact Form 7, Audio Player, All In One SEO, WP Touch and Yoast Breadcrumbs. Website In A Weekend is back in business.

Sort of.

I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus for the last month or so, and now I’m trying to regain momentum. Website In A Weekend isn’t working as it should, and that’s a problem. A problem requiring some perspective, some distance to get the bigger picture back in view. Whence a long vacation to Burning Man, where I’m completely out of reach by any method of communication, save walking to camp and talking to me in person (provided you find me at camp…).

Here’s a few of the many things I learned on vacation:

  • Daily blogging works. For me. Period.

    There’s a few people that “caution” against daily posting, but I’ve noticed at least one of those still posts daily more often than not. Frankly, if I’m not writing daily, I get distracted by other things. Living in the San Francisco Bay area means there’s a lot of cool distractions. Must focus. Write daily.

  • Website In A Weekend has gone off the rails.

    There’s good reasons for this (building audience, getting SEO traction), but it’s time to get it back on track.

  • Blog Post Engineering is selling.

    Slowly but surely, and one copy at a time, it’s getting traction. Now to apply general principle of “What works, do more of that.” And I have been. I’m putting in about an hour a day on the BPE project. (Yes, it’s WAY more than “just another ebook.”)

Now here’s the conundrum: daily blogging works, but I don’t have time to go whole hog.

Solution: work on Website In A Weekend an hour per day. Using a timer. And logging the work.

In other words:

When you can’t fish, cut bait.

And that’s what you’re going to see over the next month or so, right here on Website In A Weekend: a whole lot of bait cutting. Daily, more or less. The daily posting I’m doing on a private web log for BPE is working really, really well, and I’m curious how well that model will work here.

This morning’s “bait:”

  1. As noted above, reinstalled BPE KISS Kit, Comment Luv, Contact Form 7, Audio Player, All In One SEO, WP Touch and Yoast Breadcrumbs.
  2. Project management: developing the task list for several chores way overdue.
  3. Wrote this blog post.

Are you cutting any bait? Or is it fishing time? Let’s trade notes in the comments.

Filed Under: Blogging success Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

My Eyeballs Are Bleeding – And How I Write Thousands of Words Every Week

November 10, 2009 By 25 Comments

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

Gordie’s unhappy.

I can’t say I blame him.

He’s breaking into the blogging world, and it’s tough going. He’s not sure if he’ll throw in the towel or not. Personally, I think he just needs to take a few days off, and he’ll be right back with it. And Mike has it right: if you aren’t bleeding from the eyeballs, you’re probably not working it hard enough.

Personally, I think Gordie’s going to be just fine. He may not have that much traffic, but the traffic he has sticks around to join his community. I subscribed to his RSS feed; I’m interested in seeing where he goes with it.

So how do I it?

Crank out thousands of words every week?

Basically, there’s two reasons.

Is this how blogging feels, sometime?

Is this how blogging feels, sometimes?

First, I fish in the rain. I don’t think about blogging, I just do it. I learned to surf the same way: just go.

Don’t check the surf conditions…


…get in the car and go surf.

After I started checking the surf conditions, I started making excuses: “Too windy blown out.” or “Not enough swell.” Consequently, I’ve lost a lot of ability. I did better surfing in all conditions, even when it was really crappy and I was the only person in the water.

Blogging is the same sort of thing. I don’t think about it, I just do it.

The second reason is simple…


I’m not actually a “blogger.”

Sure, I tell people I’m a blogger, and I sure write a lot of articles on blogs. But in the end, I’m not really a blogger.

I’m a engineer, surfer dude, aficionado of exotic tropical milkweeds, once-and-future-caver dude, computer programmer, former US Marine, carpenter, occasional rock climber, stairscaper, mentor to friends and acquaintances, all around “good guy” during the day… and a thoroughly bad boy when I go out at night (but I don’t write about that. Here).


Fundamentally, I’m a writer.

All this… stuff… gives me an incredibly rich vein of material to mine for writing. Just writing out that list induced a cascade of article ideas through my brain. And I haven’t had my morning cup of coffee yet.

But there’s more I need to learn, especially about writing. I want to improve the quality of my writing, and that’s going to require more time per article than I’m spending right now. Sure, quantity has it’s own quality, I get that. But taking the game to the next level requires more BS&T.

So if the posting frequency here on Website In A Weekend slows down a bit, it’s not because I’ve run out of ideas (no “brain crack” for me). It’s because I’m amping up elsewhere.

I can assure you my draft queue is still growing.

In fact, it’s gotten too large. I need to shorten it. Recall I’m the “Professor” type blogger. I have a bunch of professor-type articles languishing in Drafts. You can help me unload my drafts queue; which article do you want to read most:


[polldaddy poll="2219123"]

I’ll run this poll until I’m tired of looking at it, then write the article most in demand.

In the meantime, I’m working on my own revenue plan, which I’ll write more about in the near future. Yes, there will be affiliate links. Yes, it’s a good program or I wouldn’t be wasting my time. And no, you don’t have to buy anything to get some really amazing benefits. If you’re willing to put in the work…

But what about you?

Where are you at as a blogger? Are you in The Dip, or have you already come through it? Are or you still in that first flush of productivity? I know there’s a bunch of you lurking out there in my RSS feed… stop reading start writing! Share your story. Give us a link so we can visit you.

Filed Under: Creating Content Tagged With: ,