WPSumo Promo Code – July 2011 Edition

I know many of you were waiting for the usual Mariner Promo Code fiesta here, but alas, all good things come to an end. The Mariner promotion, allegedly one of the longest promotions on the internet, with more than 2 and a half years running, is currently on hold.

So, long live our newest promotion, the one related to the ultimate WordPress framework, WPSumo. As you may already know, I am a partner in this project. That means that I know pretty much everything about it. So, without further ado, let’s see the code:

wpsumorocks

This promo code will give you an instant 30$ off of the Developer License. The one that lets you use WPSumo on unlimited domains, that is. In order to use it, you just have to click on this link:

WPSumo Developer License

and then scroll down to the field where it says “enter coupon code” (obviously). Enter the promo code and then click “Proceed To Checkoout”. You’ll be taken to PayPal where you can finish the transaction. The total amount should be 99 USD.

Why You Should Do This?

So, let’s pretend you’ve never been on my blog before and just stumbled upon this post by doing a search for “premium wordpress frameworks” (which is very likely to happen, by the way). What can you actually do with this WPSumo? Well, you can do a lot. I strongly advise you to have a look at this article

12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo

and then come back here. Because, from now on, I will publish an extra reason in each monthly promotion about WPSumo we’re going to have.

How To Create A Work With Me Page

Have you noticed my latest Work With Me page? Kinda neat, isn’t it? I’m not talking about the content here, but about the look and feel. Well, believe it or not, I did it in under 5 minutes. And I also created a nice screencast in which I’m taking you through this process, step by step. Yes, I did that in under 5 minutes and you can watch the proof right now:

Just remember, the promo code is

wpsumorocks

It will shave an instant 30$ from your purchase, thus leaving the Developer License at only $99. All you have to do is to click the link below:

WPSumo Developer License

Enjoy

 

12 Reasons To Switch To WPSumo

I’ve been an early adopter on many toys and gadgets. I’ve written about iPhone on this blog when the iPhone was just a rumor. I bought Thesis in its early days. And I also downloaded, tried and promoted Scribe SEO when almost nobody knew what it was all about it.

But what I am going to do today will be quite different. Because it’s not technically about being an early adopter, although it may certainly look as it is. Fact is I am a third of WPSumo, the newest and brightest wordpress framework in town. Yes, a wordpress framework. But not a regular one. WPSumo is something that will really, really rock your socks.

The Reasons

Everything in this Universe has a reason. Newton apple felt down because there is this thing called gravity. On a much simpler level, we usually get or do or attract things because we need them. So. WPSumo was born out of my need for something better than what I had so far.

No pun intended to what I used so far, and I mean Thesis. But there is a time when something better comes into our lives and we just have to go with it. I’m not alone in the WPSumo team. There are two other wordpress wizards who not only made this possible, but also made it possible in an incredibly short amount of time. We spent only 100 days on development. For what we were able to come up with, 100 days is like a minute. We packed an amazing amount of features straight from the day one of availability. Yes, we do have a roadmap and we plan to add even more features. But we just thought it wouldn’t be right to launch it without each and every thing we can think of. Let’s get down to it. I left the paragraphs intentionally short because there will be much more info at the main WPSumo website. But it’s also nice to have an overview of what features we think are crucial for this product.

Reason 1: Mobility

WPSumo comes with an integrated state-of-the-art mobile theme. It’s like a child theme, only for mobile devices. It’s for free, you know, and integrated with the main framework. And you can customize the hell out of it. Read more…

Reason 2: SEO

I know how important SEO is. As a matter of fact, a third of my blog traffic is coming from search engines. I know, it’s not as it should be. That’s exactly why I’m using WPSumo advanced SEO settings. Title, description, metatags, robots, all from within a handy setting tab. Read more…

Reason 3: Child Themes

Although DragosRoua.com is my main blogging outlet, I do have another blogs. And I want a single solution to manage all of them. This is why we packed child themes into WPSumo from the day one. Read more..

Reason 4: Developer

I do write some PHP code every once in a while. So I wanted to have an open structure, a structure upon one can build his own features, if need will be. WPSumo features a very interesting back end structure which can have both hooks and extensions attached. Read more…

Reason 5: Export. Import

I like to tweak my theme on the local machine, most of the time. Then, I do the same things (more or less) on the live machine. You know the drill. Well, not anymore. WPSumo settings can be exported and imported into any WPSumo instance. Read more…

Reason 6: Style Editor

Although I know a bit of CSS, I’m not a big fan of hand styling my theme. On the contrary, I’d rather spend that time writing or coding interesting stuff. This is why we created a very powerful visual style editor. Pretty much everything can be styled form within this. Read more…

Reason 7: Shortcodes

Think of shortcodes like the brick and mortar for a site. Buttons, tabbars, titles, you name it. We have packed a lot of shortcodes into the default WPSumo installation. Making a button or a tabbar is just a matter of point and click. Neato. Read more…

Reason 8: Social Media

I get around 70% of my blog traffic from social media. That’s a lot. And I really want to take care of this visitors stream. So we paid extra attention to the social media integration. That means every button, from Twitter to Facebook and even Facebook Comments (enabled by default on this post). Read more..

Reason 9: Layouts And Sidebars

That’s where it gets interesting. Some of my posts have a life of their own, so to speak (and I’m sure many bloggers experienced this). So I wanted a way to create a more customized experience for them. Like having a different sidebar for each popular post. And to do this visually. You got it. Read more…

Reason 10: Ads

I admit, this was not one of my requests, but rather a general need in the market. After all, we did this framework for other people, not for us. And these people need a  very flexible and customizable solution to manage their ads. That’s exactly what we did. Read more…

Reason 11: Portfolio And Featured Area

Another thing that isn’t really my thing, but it’s huge for other people. We created a featured area (an extremely diverse and complex featured area) and a very powerful portfolio feature. So, if you create something visually and want to promote it with wordpress, you’re in it. Read more..

Reason 12: Blog Audit

When we decided to create WPSumo, I realized that my plugin, Blog Audit, just needed to be in it. If you don’t know what Blog Audit is, very briefly, it’s a piece of functionality which is unique (as far as I can tell) that lets you measure your blogging effectiveness (how often do you write, how many comments you generate, etc). Read more…

Reason 13: Affiliate Program

Yes, I lied, there are 13 reasons. This one is for you. We decided to create an affiliate program for WPSumo. Basically, you get 30% off of any sale you made. And that’s on top of riding the wave of the latest and brightest framework in town, you know. You get that for free, because you’re smart. And cool. Seriously now, here’s where you can sign up.

Well, that’s it. If you’re serious about blogging, you should get that baby.

 

 

5 Reasons For A Healthy Blog Hiatus

Ok, I hear you guys. Especially the guy in the back, all pumped up, ready to write 10 posts each morning, to comment on 20 blogs in his lunch break and rock the world in the evening. I hear what you say: “A blog hiatus? As bloggers, aren’t us supposed to write day and night? Are you I-N-S-A-N-E? ”. Nope, as strange as it may seem, I’m not insanse. In fact, I’m better than ever, although my blog activity took a plunge in the last month or so.

But it was a good thing. Ok, “good” and “bad” may have different meanings based on your cultural background, religion, life philosophy and a number of other, possibly unrelated, reasons. Let’s not use “good” or “bad”. Let’s use “healthy” instead of “good”. Yeap, my blog hiatus turned to be a really healthy thing. Without further ado, here’s why.

1. You Need Time To Refine Your Message

If you write each and every day, you may lose sight of the big picture. It’s true, the habit of writing each and every day is an amazing asset. It makes you productive and ready to go whenever you’re hit with inspiration. But at the same time, it makes you repetitive and a little bit anxious. What am I going to write about today? Am I going to be inspired?

I’m sure that each and every blogger hit the “blogging burnout”. I know I hit it more than once. It’s a tough game, that blogging burnout. In my experience, it’s the closest thing to depression I know. It’s like you’re out of options, which, of course, it’s never true. You always have an option, but sometimes, when enough is enough, you just don’t see those options clearly.

As in fitness, the muscle is built during the rest time, not during the effort.

2. You Are Involved In Other Projects

And that’s fine too. During the last few months, two of my projects took the lead. One is iAdd, which grew way over my initial expectations, from a proof of concept to a stable-and-almost-mainstream iPhone / iPad (and soon Mac) app, and the other is my newly born baby, WPSumo. If you followed closely my social media stream, you know what WPSumo is.

But if you didn’t, let me start by saying that this is the biggest project I embraced since I sold my company, two and a half years ago. It’s a wordpress framework packed with tons of features. I’m only one third of it, the other two being taken by two wordpress wizards. We launched last Friday and we’re still pumped up with all the enthusiasm. I will write extensively about this framework in the next few weeks, so stick around.

So, although I’ve been a little bit quiet in writing, my blogging activities were actually enhanced.

3. You Want To Evaluate Your Work

During the last two months my blog had a significant surge in traffic. In simpler words, the number of people who are visiting DragosRoua.com is now constantly in the 120.000 – 130.000 area. And that’s a steady flow, not based on some volatile circumstance. I actually feel that I entered another level.

And this requires a little bit of analysis. I’m not talking only about extracting data from the statistics, although I started to do it more seriously during the last few weeks (and identified some very interesting patterns) but also about my main vision and next steps.

You cannot clearly see where you’re going if you don’t stop every now and then on a higher cliff.

4. You Write Somewhere Else

Exactly, one of the reasons I wrote less on my blog it’s because I started to write more on other blogs. I became a regular contributor to Stepcase Lifehack. Interestingly enough, my first article there, 7 Not So Obvious Habits To Maximize Productivity, got a lot of attention and I’m really happy about this.

It’s a completely different experience for me. It’s one thing to do a little bit of guest posting, and another to be a regular contributor to a mainstream blog. At this moment, Stepcase Lifehack has more than 80.000 subscribers. I am quite enthusiastic about this and I will try a few different approaches and writing styles.

Will see how this goes, but for now, it’s a nice new toy.

5. You Just Need A Break

One of the biggest traps of personal development is to aim for perfection. Perfection is boring, being better is where all the fun is. So I’m not afraid to admit that I just need a pause from time to time. I’m not a writing machine, nor do I want to become one. Sometimes I just want to leave the work behind and enjoy life a little bit. Or a little bit more.

***

So, here are the 5 reasons that made my blogging hiatus quite useful and healthy. Now that you’ve read this, go back and continue writing on your blog.

Blogging With An iPhone, An iPad And iAdd

(Every once in a while I have this urge to write a shiny, picture-rich blog post. The following post is one of those.)

The other day, after the storm passed away, I surprised myself thinking at how my digital nomad life has changed completely the way I work. I don’t have an office anymore – and I do enjoy this every minute, after more than 10 years of working for my own company, in my own office – and that means I work pretty much everywhere. The distinction between work and regular life slowly faded away. It’s not like I’m working anymore. I spend quality time in a coffee shop for a few hours, but at the same time (and in the same place) I do write blog posts, write code or do consulting.

Although it may seem like a very comfortable way of living, it’s not even remotely like this. It’s very easy to get distracted and stop creating value. As you may imagine, is very important to keep things under control.

So, how I manage to actually run a fairly popular blog, do consulting on a regular basis, create iPhone apps and self-publish my ebooks? The short answer: I keep myslef organized. The long answer: you just started to read it . What follows is a very accurate reconstruction of what it takes for me to write a blog post, from idea to publishing. Sepcifically, this very blog post.

On the technical side, it involves and iPhone, and iPad and iAdd. Of course, a Mac is necessary for publishing too. As you may know, I am the creater of iAdd, so I am definitely biased here. It’s not like you can’t use something else, it’s just that iAdd really works for me.

Capturing Blog Post Ideas

Being on the run pretty much anytime, I started to capture my ideas using my iPhone. In the beginning I used a mind-mapping software, but now I use iAdd. iAdd let me save in it 4 types of information: tasks, projects, ideas and events. Every time I have a blog post idea, I fire up iAdd and quickly jot the title of the post:

A blog post is more likely to be created as a project. After I added the project, I start to add short tasks to it. They are more like the building blocks of the entire blog writing process, not only paragraph sketches or ideas.

Once I feel I’m ok with it, I sync my app to Dropbox. The newly added project will be safe and, more than that, it will be available next time when I sync with my iPad too.

Managing The Actual Process

Now, suppose I’m back to a more comfortable place and I have a little bit of time. I take my iPad, fire up iAdd and do a sync. After the sync, my project from iPhone will be magically available on iPad. (Just click on the following screenshots to enlarge them).

The first thing I do once the project is available on my iPad is re-ordering tasks (I can reorder tasks on the iPhone too, but usually I don’t have time for this, plus, on the iPad is more space).

After reordering, I quickly peruse the tasks and if I feel the need to enhance or complete any one of them, i do it.

Of course, now it’s time to add more details, so on the iPad I add the more complex tasks to the project.

At some point, the blog post project will be finished. From this point, it takes two different routes. First of all, the entire project gets sent by email (you can do that from inside iAdd). Like that, I will have all the ideas on my Mac too. I usually copy and paste the email message in my blogging setup.

But moving the work completely on the iMac will undermine the power of iAdd. So, the second route the project takes is to be sent to Decide. This is how it looks when it’s sent to Decide.

As I already told you, not all the tasks are involving writing. Some of them are atomic actions which can be performed anytime. For instance, in this specific project, I have to make screenshots. This can be done anytime. It’s an atomic task that can be performed any time I have 15 minutes free. So, I start to add contexts to all the tasks in the project.

And also I add due dates to each task.

After I finished, all the tasks are ordered ascending by time, giving me quite a clear idea about what I have to do.

One more thing. I may keep the project in Decide for as long as I want. And usually I do. I don’t write all the blog posts at once. I have other projects too. But once I’m committed to a project, I move it to Do. All the tasks that have been added in Assess, completed with contexts and due dates in Decide, will show up in my time based views in Do. Meaning that if one of the tasks is due Today, I will have it under my Today tab in iAdd. Along with the project title too. Once done, the task can be crossed off.

But if I feel a little bit lost, I can also look at the entire project in Do. I can see all the remaining tasks, and, if I want to edit their due dates, I send the entire project back to Decide.

Well, that’s pretty much it. Expected more? Sorry to tell you that I like things simple and effective

Conclusions

So, I capture all the ideas on my iPhone, I manage the entire project on my iPad and then I publish on my Mac. If I add together all the tasks involved in creating a blog post, I think I am somewhere between 1 and 3 hours for any of the blog posts I manage like this. It doesn’t happen in one chunk, as I told you, because my work time is unusually fractured, but the good thing is that it does happen in a consistent way.

 

77 Things I Did In 2010

365 days are a lot of time. And while it’s great to live them to the full, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, it’s always nice to take a break and look back (with or without anger, your choice) and see what you’ve done with that time. I did this exercise last year and it proved to be one of the most challenging blog posts I ever wrote. It also proved to be quite a viral endeavor, “infecting” dozens of blogs with similar lists. So, without further ado, here’s what I did in 2010. In no particular order.

1. Wrote 4 Ebooks In One Month

Ok, this was part of a challenge with my friend and fellow blogger Steven Aitchison. I agree the books were largely based on some of the most popular blog posts and that made the task a little bit easier. But the whole process was fun and I learned a lot about how to measure your effort when starting such a task.

2. Got Featured On Lifehacker. Twice

First post was about and How To Be The Best Version Of Yourself and the second one was How To Defrag Your Mind In 5 Easy Steps. Got an incredible spike in the number of visitors and a lot of hosting problems associated with it which ultimately made me change my hosting to Rackspace Cloud.

3. Coached A Banker About Blogging

Or so I thought. In fact, I didn’t coach anyone, I just had the privilege to meet an authentic and valuable person. I was the one inspired and motivated after we met. He runs one of the largest banks in Romania. How we met is not relevant anymore. What is relevant is that, after almost 9 months, he’s still on the track with his blog. And he does a great job, being known as the blogging banker.

4. Launched my first iPhone App

Surprisingly enough this wasn’t iAdd, which is the most complex and polished app I wrote so far, but a small game called iFlipEm Lite. I confess now that the game took only 15 hours of coding (including some learning of Lua). I used this app mainly to learn and test the AppStore submission process.

5. Created An iPhone App In 30 Days

Yes, this one is iAdd, the app based on my own productivity framework, called Assess-Decide-Do. It was one of the most consuming and frustrating 30 days challenges I ever had, and one with enormous implications, and I’m not talking about the business part of it. I plan to write an extensive article on that because it involves some very interesting facts about our brain and how we use it.

6. Launched my first iPad app

That was a (slightly modified) version of iAdd, my flagship app for iOS. Took some time to familiarize myself with the iPad environment but in the end I made it. Syncing with Dropbox actually made sense, now that you have at least two devices to use the app. And yes, you can buy it in the AppStore.

7. Had My First Post Translated To Japanese

Of course, it was 100 Ways To Live A Better Life. A big surprise as I’ve was always been keen on Japanese culture. The surprise grew even bigger when I contacted the translator and found out the she (yes, is a “she”) started her very blog as a result of reading that post. And that the translation was an act of gratitude.

8. Became A Regular Contributor To SharingLifeSkills

It’s a collaborative project started by my friend Jonathan Wells. I am in an incredible good company there, some of the most important voices in the self-improvement blogging niche have joined forces into this one. I highly recommend you to subscribe to this newsletter.

9. Became A Contributor For The Daily Brainstorm

One of Leo Babauta’s brain children, The Daily Brainstorm aims at giving a daily snapshot of what;s happening in the blogging world. There are over 100 contributors from various topics. Again, my feed was selected on the self-improvement area. I’m honored and proud to be there.

10. Turned 40

And enjoyed it tremendously. For some reason, this event highly challenged all my assumptions about numbers. And introduced me to the fine art of new beginnings.

11. My Non-compete Agreement Ended

This isn’t something I did, of course, but it’s something with a tremendous importance for my social life. I was able to reinsert myself into the local business circle and start working on new projects. On the other hand, having and obeying to a non-compete agreement was one of the most important things that happened to me.

12. Practiced With A Magic Fairy

It’s not what you think. It’s just a form of clarifying your goals, with a touch of humor. During 2010 I experienced a lot of this “magic fairy got it all backwards” stuff, so I thought it would be a good idea to share the whole exercise. You can find it here and prepare for the unexpected.

13. Been On Board At A Startup Weekend Event

This event gathers together entrepreneurs in the online field and aims to create a complete workable app in a 48 hours time frame. Been also a member of the jury. Had to mentor projects and give advice to the attendees, evaluate the pitches and pick a winner. It has been a very interesting business experience.

14. Started A 6 Months Consulting Project

Which will continue in 2011 as well. By far the longest one I ever had and one that is going really well. After acting exclusively online and on this blog only, I have to admit that this is a refreshing experience.

15. Hired A Programmer Again After 2 Years

Not for me, but it was part of the consulting contract. I thought I lost the skills to hire people, but apparently I didn’t. From the selection phase, going through the interview and negotiation phases, all seemed incredibly familiar. Maybe I should try this again.

16. Been On Board At A Launch48 event

Somehow similar to the StartUp Weekend but with a different logistic approach. Again, I was fortunate enough to see a lot of ideas turned into projects and watch them unfold in a 48 hours time window. Met a lot of interesting persons too.

17. Been On Board Of Venture Connect. Twice

This is a brand new local event (local in respect to the fact that it takes place in Romania, but its audience is international) which aims to match online entrepreneurs with investors. It was an enlightening experience. I evaluated projects, discussed them in the event board and then coached the selected entrepreneurs.

18. Separated From My Ex-wife

Like in a real form, when she moved away, a couple of months ago. While we agreed to part ways even since 2009, I accepted to continue to live together until she finds something suitable for herself. Took incredibly longer than I expected (almost the whole year) and in the process I had some of the most frustrating experiences in my entire life. By far the most challenging situation in 2010 for me and one that I’m incredibly happy I overcame.

19. Got My First Second Hand Car

It’s a Freelander and I am very satisfied with it. Again, switching from an Infiniti FX35 to a Freelander may seem counter intuitive. It isn’t. Not when you plan living your life on two countries, namely Romania and New Zealand. Priorities are changing. Values are changing. I’m far better off with this car.

20. Had My First Mention On An Adult Blog

It’s the blog of Camille Crimson, a Canadian lady who seems to be quite popular in the adult entertainment. The blog post mentioned was again 100 Ways To Live A Better Life. I’m sure men already clicked through the link the moment they saw the “adult” word, so the invitation is for you ladies: go ahead and visit the blog too, you may have something to learn from Camille.

21. Learned How To Starve My Daemons

This is a life long process, I agree, but this year was particularly filled with opportunities on how to learn this. Had to deal with a lot of pressure and some pretty tough challenges. Both in my personal and professional life. But it was, and still is, ok. As long as I don’t feed those daemons.

22. Did Math And Grammar Lessons With My Son

For some of you this may not be worth mentioning as it goes without saying. For me it was important and it still is. Didn’t have much access to my son in the last few years so now I took advantage of every opportunity to spend time with him. Math is difficult, by the way.

23. Got My Posts Proofread By Somebody I Never Met

This was in the trend of “I don’t know who you are but your blog helped me, how can I contribute back”. We did it a number of times until it became obvious for me that I do have to work my English more. But it was a very interesting experience.

24. Learned A Few (More) Things About Toxic Persons

One of them being that many of those persons have no idea they’re toxic. They’re just moving away without looking back at the gas they’re leaving behind. If you think you live with such a person, maybe reading this post will help.

25. Was Happy To Spend Some Time With My 96 Year Old Grandfather

We do have a history of longevity in our family. My father’s father died at 82. My other grandfather, the one I visited, is still fit, walking by himself and being much more lucid than other young people I know. Didn’t spend as much time as I wanted to, but as long as it lasted it was really good.

26. Got Myself An iPad

As always, I tend to be a little late to those gadget parties. I’m not a sucker for gadgets and I solved this problem a few years ago when I decided I am an Apple fanboy and that’s it. Everything else, I’m not interested in. This iPad is fine piece of engineering and user experience. Especially when combined with my own productivity app.

27. Significantly Lowered My Rant Tolerance

One of the things that goes with being a moderately (or not so moderately, some would say) popular blogger is that you become a target. So I received lots of attacks (strangely enough, from only one source, an ex-blogging star from Romania) but somehow I chose not to respond. And felt much better. Go read about your own rant tolerance if you’re curious what this is.

28. Discovered That Everybody Has His Own Book Of Life

Which is sometimes difficult to understand or read. But that didn’t make it less true. Make sure your own book of life is written in a language that others can understand.

29. Implemented A New Exercising And Eating Routine

Which has been going on for the last 3 months. After being a vegetarian and raw vegan, I decided it’s time to try something new, so I’m on a paleo type of diet. It’s based on the fact that our body didn’t have time to adjust to the agricultural revolution which means cereals and dairy are things which are not properly handled, so to speak. So I’m only on vegetables, fruits, seeds and meat. Also, unprocessed food as much as possible but it’s not mandatory.

30. Did My First Podcast

Which is my only podcast to date. But the experience led me to try something new about monetizing my blog and also revealed some stuff about my English accent. Which is interesting, so to speak. If you wanna hear it, go ahead.

31. Sold My First Audio Product

Inspired by some of the feedback I got after the first podcast I created my first audio product. Which actually sells.

32. Attended To An Astrology Workshop

That was a first, although I am an astrology student for more than 5 years now. Had mixed feelings because the structure of the workshop wasn’t quite what I expected. On the other side, I had really insightful conversations with the people involved and made a few interesting new friends.

33. Learned How To Accept My Failures

Up to the point that I identified 6 stages of them. That post soon became so popular that it attracted an entire interview based on it. More on that later, though.

34. Got Beer Money Via Snail Mail

Also a first, and also a sign of appreciation from one of my fellow bloggers out there, the distinguished Jonathan Mead, by his name. Imagine going to the post office, open an envelope from United States and find a 10 dollar bill. For beer. Here’s to you, Jonathan

35. Realized That I Love The Discomfort Zone

And made peace with that. I always had this tension between living an interesting life and living a comfortable life. A comfortable life may be socially accepted, materially fulfilling and so on. But it’s also boring like hell. An interesting life is hurtful at times, painful or unexpected. But you never get bored.

36. Hit A Glass Wall

With my head, that is. On one of the busiest Bucharest boulevards. And, as far as I remember it was kinds of a rush hour too. So I made the evening of at least a few dozens of people. Even now, every time I remember it, I still stop in the middle of whatever I’m doing and laugh my but at it. Including this time. Read on.

37. Turned Into A Digital Nomad

I always wanted to experience this lifestyle, and last year finally gave me that flavor. Working without a fixed office, but doing exactly what I want to do, and with the highest degree of productivity. Being a digital nomad is all about blending in a mix of opportunities, minimalism and clear goals.

38. Started A Personal War With Frustration

Which, along with anger, is a very legitimate feeling to have. It’s releasing a lot of energy and it’s a clear sign that you do have an opinion about stuff. So frustration is not bad, staying there for too long is bad. So I created my own set of rules, 33 of them, to overcome frustration.

39. Created My Own Minimum Survival Kit

Again, it may not be what you think about, but it may come in useful. It’s based on my experience during a real war, the Romanian Revolution and on some other personal experiences. The post describing this minimum survival kit got quoted on various blogs pretty fast and it also played really nice on social media.

40. Survived To An Ants Invasion

Basically, one morning I woke up to see our house taken over by an aggressive community of ants, with which, until that very morning, we shared peacefully our own backyard. So, assisted by Bianca, my 4 and a half year girl, I had to cope, in a hysterically-bored way, with a rather unstoppable flow of angry and stubborn ants.

41. Exercised My Starting Fresh Strategies

In many ways, 2010 was a turning point for me. Some events were spontaneous, created by my own will, some were imposed on me, so to speak. But almost any major situation I experienced this year was about starting fresh. As usual, a huge list emerged out of this.

42. Saw Inception

Yes, that film was important enough to be mentioned on a list of 77 things I did in 2010. I’m not a hyper when it comes to movies, but this one was different. It still stands out as one of the most interesting video events of the last few years. And one of the most thought-provoking also.

43. Practiced More Care

When it comes to this word, “care”, people have mixed representations of what it means. Yours truly included. So, one of the things I did in 2010 was to explore what this really means for me. Of course, this may sounds strange to mention on a list of 77 things I did, but, to be honest, I don’t really care about others may think.

44. Released The Free Ebook “How To Build Reputation With Your Blog”

Based on a 7 posts series, this ebook proved to be so popular that I might even build an online course based on it. It also was downloaded more than 500 times without no promotion at all, only word of mouth. Or, if you prefer, only based on reputation.

45. Launched The “Assess-Decide-Do: Natural Productivity” Ebook

This is what I like to call the flagship product of the year. Not only because it incorporates many of my personal insights on productivity, but because it’s part of a bigger ecosystem of products, including the iPhone and iPad app, iAdd. The ebook generated more than 1500 USD in sales in the first 3 months. You can still get it here.

46. Witnessed The First Grape In My Vineyward

It’s not a huge vineyard, only 12 roots, but it was planted and taken care of entirely by me. And this summer I saw the first grape in it. It was a huge satisfaction, although I knew from the start the vine is still too young to sustain the grape till maturity. Next year there will be more.

47. Discovered The Power And Price Of Illusions

And the thin line between them. Illusions, both induced or self-created and maintained have a huge power on us. But there is also a huge price to be paid if we play on that side for too long. Also, one of the most popular posts of the year, you can read more about this here.

48. Ate Strawberries From My Own Garden

Another first for my entire life. Those were the tastiest strawberries I ever ate. I had enough supply for at least two weeks and I’m already looking forward for the next spring, to eat them again.

49. Did My First Barbecue On Snow

Just before Christmas and it was absolutely amazing. Spent like half an hour keeping the fire burning on wet woods, but in the end I managed to have one of the best barbecues in my entire life.

50. Created, Managed And Implemented A Live Promotion Event

I used to do this on a regular basis back when I had my own online business, but this time the event was part of the consulting contract I got. It was fun. Not to mention the event involved 4 gorgeous hostess to be, well, taught what they have to say and how to behave.

51. Went To A Steve Vai Concert With My Son

A double first. Seeing a concert with my son and seeing Steve Vai live. I don’t talk much about my musical preferences on this blog (although some people suggest that I should) but you have to know that Steve Vai (and his tutor, Joe Satriani) are ranking quite high among my preferences.

52. Gave My First Presentation On Mobile Development

That was part of the biggest event about the online business in Romania, and the presentation was so much more fun for me because I had no idea I was going to present until just a few hours before the actual event. Of course, I had to improvise, but apparently, people enjoyed it.

53. Got Fiberglass Internet At Home

Again. for some of you this may be nothing. But in the last 3 years the area where I currently live when I’m in Romania was completely isolated from the digital world. I had to rely on 3G radio internet which was only good to (partially) read email, nothing more. I’m actually feeling connected now.

54. Visited A 225 Meters Deep Salt Mine

It’s actually 225 meters under the sea level, but it’s still an amazing place. It’s located close to my home town in Romania, near Ocnele Mari and it has a church, a football field, some restaurants and playgrounds. An amazing (and healing, also) place.

55. Fixed The Roof Of My House

Last winter I witnessed, for the first time in my life, again, how it is to live in a house with a leaking roof. I agree that a thinner roof will bring nature closer to ourselves, but if sleeping on a dry bed is included in the benefits of civilization, than I’d gladly keep the nature only for hiking. By the way, I didn’t fix it myself, the building company did, but it was kinda fun to watch them doing it.

56. Learned Objective C From Scratch

Of course, this is part of the whole iPhone / iPad app thing, but it is something that will last and allow me to build even more apps.

57. Gave My First Live Interview On Skype

It was the one published on Hulbert Lee’s website and I have to admit I was a little bit nervous. But somehow I managed to cope with it. Or so I think. You be the judge of that, listen to it here.

58. Gave My First Live Interview To Another Blogger

Meaning we met in real life although we didn’t know each other before. We talked over a cup of tea and really have a good time. It didn’t feel like an interview. Technically this happened in 2010, but I guess it would be published in 2011.

59. Learned Lua – The Programming Language

It’s not something that is extremely difficult and I think for a seasoned programmer this won’t take more than 2 afternoons to master. Lua is an extremely simple programming language and it was used to code my first iPhone app, a (silly) game of flipping tiles.

60. Gave My First Astrological Readings

Surprisingly enough, these were delivered to people working on some of the shared offices I use every now and then. So it was a rather technical audience. I was a little bit surprised myself that those readings were so successful (I think I did at least 7 or but the fact that they were pro bono may have had something to do with that.

61. Witnessed My First Posts With More than 150.000 Visits

It’s about, in order 33 Ways To Get And Mantain Motivation, 33 Ways To Start Your Day and 100 Ways To Live A Better Life. All have between 155.000 and 165.000 unique visits so far. That proves once again that the Internet is a medium which favors lists as the most efficient way of spreading information.

62. Witnessed More Than 9000 Downloads Of My Products

Most of them are trial versions of my books or the free ebooks I released this year. When I sit down and think for a second, 9000 seems like an unreal number for a personal blog. If you want to know what I’m talking about, go ahead and visit my downloads page.

63. Self-Published 5 Of My Ebooks

I used CreateSpace for the task, which makes the ebooks available on Amazon.com too, at no additional cost. The whole self–publishing process was extremely tedious, but once I got my head around it, things were really smooth. You can see the ebooks (and even buy one, if you want) at my Amazon.com author page.

64. Got iAdd Featured 3 Times In AppStore

Once you get into the Apple ecosystem you learn that they will do the heavy marketing stuff for you. And that includes promoting your app. But what was different this time it was that my app was still the product of an indie developer, (myself and I), and that the productivity apps market is a pretty crowded one on the AppStore.

65. Kept The Longest Promotion On The Internet Running

It’s a promotion which involves the delivery of monthly promo codes for a some fine Mac apps, including Mac Journal, my blogging tool of choice. This promotion was running with the same structure (only the discounts increased) for more than 2 years.

66. Lost 4 Kilos

It happened in exactly 365 days. I find this encouraging. If I keep the pace, that will give me approximately 23 years until I will vanish completely. Joke aside, it all went away because I kept a strict exercising and dieting routine. A much more socially friendly than the raw vegan diet I experienced last year.

67. Watched Bianca Writing Her Name For The First Time

With a little bit of Klingonian calligraphy, I suppose, as the letters are still a little bit hard to recognize, but it’s the real thing. Also, remembered how was to witness this for my first kid, Victor, almost 8 years ago.

68. Got Stuck In Snow 4 Times In Less Than 48 Hours

Last winter was a incredibly hard. Although I had a quite powerful car at that time (Infiniti FX 35, that is), I still manage to get snowed. Last time it happened, nobody could get me out of that white snow hole, except for a white horse, driven by a bunch pf gipsies. Crazy.

69. Started A Discussion For A Tony Robbins Event In Romania

Noticing happened, unfortunately, but I think there’s still time. Also, working with his Italy subcontractors team was a very interesting experience. I learned a lot about the internal business structure of these events and also a lot about the business and promotion side of the whole package.

70. Got Snowed, Cut Off From The World And Missed A Plane To Rome

Part of the “got stuck in snow saga” from above. The only thing that stayed between me and a plane to Rome was one kilometer of snowed road. One and a half meter high snow, to be more precise. Impossible to overcome. Well, maybe next year. First time I missed a plane.

71. Completely Soaked Into Avatar

There are very few fictional stories that are making an impact on me, but Avatar was one of these. Along with Inception, it became one of my favorite mental escape destinations. From the story, to the colors and execution, everything worked to brutally extract me from this world and project me into a new planet, called Pandora. I still keep my feet on the ground, though, and I’m not gonna suffer any depression because of it, rest assured about that.

72. Got Rid Of My Physical Library Of Books

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a big fan of reading and books, but my library became more of a burden than an asset. So part of it was simply gave away, part of it sold by the kilo to a big used books store in Bucharest. Downshifting means getting lighter, not heavier. And I know those books will serve other people at least as much as they served me too.

73. Settled For A Jet In 5 Years

Whatever you may say about owning and flying your own jet, I don’t care. I just want to have that experience, that’s all. I even know the make and model of my future jet. Yes, I know the price is 18 million dollars and I know I don’t have any of that money. Yet. And I still don’t care. Because that’s how goal setting works.

74. Became An Early Riser

It’s not about the time when you get up, but mostly about making this a lifestyle. This year I made a habit of waking up early and doing a lot of stuff until the normal routine kicks in. I had some hickups too, mainly when I was out partying, but the good thing is that I always got back on track.

75. Hosted My Son’s Blog

It’s just a typical teenage blog where he writes about music and whatever crosses his mind. I’m completely blown by the fact that a 13 years old can have a blog. I didn’t have one. This world is moving too fast.

76. Been Part Of Many Collaborative Projects

This was the first time I got so soaked into this type of projects and I’m really happy I did it. Not only I met a lot of nice people, but I exercised a little outside of my comfort zone, which is my own blog. You can find more about these on my about me page.

77. Survived

We do take for granted the mere fact that we live. Being through one of the most difficult years of my life (read below more about that) proved me again that survival should be taught in schools. I’m happy I lived through this year. I learned and experienced tremendously, although it seems my lessons were mostly on the dark side, this time.

***

Now, I agree that some things from this post may have lure you to the idea that is all about “how much you get done”. Nothing more wrong than that. Every number from above is nothing but a mark on a path. What is really worth is the journey, not the marks on the path. And I enjoyed the hell out of this journey.

It may have been the toughest year I had, that’s true. If I’d have to choose a year close to this one, in terms of the number and amplitude of challenges, that would be 1989, when I was caught in the middle of a war. Maybe you couldn’t see anything on the surface, because I was able to keep the blog going on, but deep down I experienced some of the most challenging events in my entire life. My deepest identity sense was on the stake. It was hurtful and downright painful at times. But in the last couple of months I started to experience healing too. It’s like a lot of the images I had about myself vanished away. What was left was something mysterious even to me.

I’m just starting to discover it.

And one thing I’m sure of, regardless of the direction my life will take: I will continue to share my trip for as long as I think there will be something useful, motivating or inspiring for other people.

To make their journey brilliantly better.

5 Unusual Ways To Measure Your Online Reputation

I’ve written this blog for more than 2 years now. Although I enjoy doing it, my business side (after all, I did have an online business for more than 10 years) keeps popping out every once in a while. For instance, my business side likes to measure stuff. How am I doing with this blog in terms of, let’s say, users, page-views, or sales? I let this side interfere every once in a while, and it helps me keep some things in perspective.

But in the last few weeks, I started to notice a different trend. Several unorthodox ways of measuring my online influence started to shape in a more and more consistent way, and apparently out of nowhere. We all know the basic metrics: unique users, page impressions, comments and so on. But I slowly discovered that your real online influence is seldom a sum of these well-know numbers. In fact, I think following those numbers can be deceiving to some degree.

I mean, what does it mean to have 100,000 unique monthly visitors? How can you translate this in terms of influence? Or reputation? What’s the point of having 3,500 twitter followers or 1,000 facebook friends? If you can’t escape those numbers, you won’t have a real image about what your reputation really is. Or at least this is what I think after taking some time to define these new and unusual ways to measure online reputation. Without further ado, let’s start.

1. Getting Hate Comments

This is tough. But it’s fundamental. Receiving hate comments is a very important part of a blogger job and you should develop a proper way of handling them. When I first received a hate comment on my blog I genuinely thought I did something wrong to the person who wrote it. But after a while I realized not only did I do nothing wrong, but it looked like however I chose to handle the conversation, the hate would not just disappear.

Some people choose to express their feelings through aggressive wording. It’s their choice and we should respect it. It’s unpleasant to get hate comments because the vibe is negative, and it’s hurtful. But it’s also part of life. And, in my experience, people who choose to express themselves through aggressive talking are very difficult to reach, as in personally, genuinely touch their inner core.

So, when you get a real hate comment on your blog, take a deep look (a deep breathe won’t hurt either), and realize that your message crossed a very remote border. Your ideas, stories or lifestyle have made their trip up to one of the farthest places in this world: the heart of a lonely, frustrated and inhibited person. The aggressive comment that person left on your blog is just the receipt your blog gets from anchoring on that shore.

2. People Are Approaching You in Real Life Situations

For example, you may be approached by people who start up conversations with you using sentences like: I don’t know you but I read your blog. Or: my girlfriend is a big fan of your blog (that’s a little bit frustrating, I admit, since it appears that all those girls who are fans of my blog, as gorgeous as they are, already have boyfriends ). All joking aside, the moment you are making it outside your regular circle of people, and being approached because of your digital brand, something good has happened.

Your circle of friends or business partnerships are usually formed by direct interactions. The smallest building block of this circle is your business card (if we’re talking about business relationships). I gave up business cards a while ago. I don’t consider myself as someone who does business anymore (although my business side still pops up every now and then, as you already know).

And when you realize that your business card has been replaced by your domain name, well, I take this as a sign that you have created a sustainable online brand.

3. Being Quoted On Totally Unrelated Blogs

I blog about personal development here but every once in a while I get a mention from a high-profile blog completely out of my niche. I mean I can expect some of my colleagues to spread the word, but when a blogger from a completely different niche mentions my work, I take it as a strong sign of a healthy and powerful influence.

The first time this happened was almost a year ago, when Gala from galadarling.com mentioned one of my posts in her weekly carousels. It felt a little bit strange to see one of my posts quoted on a fashion blog, especially since nothing in that particular post was related to fashion. The climax of this trend happened just a few days ago, when one of my most popular posts got featured on Camille Crimson’s blog.

I will leave the pleasure of exploring Camille’s blog to my male audience and, as one of my female Facebook friends said, I’ll leave the pleasure of learning a few trips and tricks from this blog to the opposite sex.

4. People Are Asking You To Let Them Help You

This has happened to me only recently, but I guess in some form it was always there. What I am talking about is that some people will draw something so profound or meaningful from your blog, that they will genuinely and transparently offer to put themselves at your service. I’ve always met people who have said in one way or another that they’re motivated, inspired, and want to give something back.

Until recently, I never really took this seriously, but then one of the people I met on Facebook (it all started with a polite and standard: “thank you for your blog” message) offered to proof-read some of my blog posts, if I would agree, of course. I agreed and we started to “work” together. I don’t know if I will make this a long term commitment (although the other person is happy to continue helping as long as I am blogging), but I also take this a sign that I must be doing something right.

5. Receiving Out Of The Blue Thank You Emails

This started to happen a year ago, and in the last few months has become more and more common. In the beginning I was getting a thank you email (or comment on the blog, for that matter) once a month. Now I’m getting almost daily interactions from people I don’t really know, in which they express their gratitude for motivation that they have drawn from this blog.

I choose to never publish these messages. It’s a private interaction, and since the person initiating it has chosen to e-mail me, which is a more private communication channel, I take it that they would like to remain anonymous. But the power of those messages is incredible. Sometimes is just something like: “I like your blog and I want to start one too, you inspired me”. But sometimes is something like: “my life has really changed and I was able to leave behind an ugly/abusive/unhappy time, thank you”.

Whenever I receive one of these messages, something starts to melt inside me. I feel it almost organically.

***

As you can see, these ways of measuring your online reputation have almost nothing to do with numbers. As a matter of fact, my supposition that numbers give you the wrong impression of what your digital brand is capable of, proved to be right. It’s true that my traffic has tripled in the last year, but the overall impact was bigger than that.

Word of caution: all the signs mentioned above are trying to tell you an important story about the brand that you have created. For the sake of your mental health, please understand that there is a difference between your digital brand and yourself. Just because you have created a famous/well respected/popular blog, it doesn’t automatically make you a famous/well respected/popular person. You have just created a powerful blog brand.

Don’t sweat over it too much. And keep having a real life.

How To Build Reputation With A Blog – Clearly State Your Expertise

That’s the first article from the series on how to build reputation with a blog and will deal with openly stating your expertise.

Back To Basics

Openly stating your expertise on your blog it’s fundamental for building online reputation, yet too often overlooked. Many bloggers, especially in the beginning, are focusing on building traffic, creating blog posts, interacting, and they forget the main reason they’re blogging for: they’re really good at something. There is something that they do better than anyone else. In this rush for creating more and more content, their very own expertise is left behind.

Well, make it obvious. Put it out there. Otherwise nobody will know what’s the difference you can make. Suppose you will build a sizable audience. You will attract a fairly large number of subscribers. Your readers may like your posts, they may feel entertained, educated or motivated by reading your blog, but they won’t create a mental link between a certain niche and your online persona. Unless you make it obvious.

How obvious? Well, it starts with your blog header and goes up to your about page. Will talk in a minute about the hot zones of your blog where you can imprint your expertise. For now, let me give you an explanation of my own blog header: brilliantly better. Apart from sounding really good (I love alliterations) it really mirrors what I am good at.

My work here aims to create a state of brilliancy while getting better. That is what I do. And this is my intended reputation. I know from experience that I can make you become not only better, but also feel brilliant in the process. That’s my main area of expertise. I have of course other, much more focused areas of interest, like blogging or online business. I’m not writing very often about them, but every few posts I publish something on these topics too. And while I’m not a top expert in these areas, I can help you to get better results by using general tools like self-discipline, personal productivity and so on. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t have a specific topic in which I can improve your activity, otherwise I would have openly state it in my blog header. It would have been something like Brilliantly Better Blogging, for instance. You can chose your own goal, your own improvement area, and then use my blog as a motivator and trigger of inspiration. This is what I do.

Now think at what YOU are doing. What exactly are you good at? What is your most important value that you are ready to expose it out there? That should be your reputation cornerstone. You should start building on that one.

Master Your Blog Header

I already talked about this briefly in the last paragraph. I will only add that this is the pivotal place for your online image. It’s the first thing the reader will see. It’s often the “title” tag that search engine are taking into account when indexing your blog. This is how you will be remembered. Don’t miss this spot by trying to throw in some fancy things, but with no relevance whatsoever in regard with your desired reputation. Be short, clear and honest. Save the fanciness for the blog posts.

Use Your Blog Posts With Caution

People are reading blog posts because they’re based on direct, human interaction. They’re not part of an elaborated publishing process, like in traditional media. Behind a blog is (usually) only one person. And people are reading that blog because of that person.

At this level, stating your expertise too often in your blog posts will be a little too much. Too obvious. Your blog posts are the place in which you are capturing your readers and make them feel good. You’re not selling anything on your blog posts. On the contrary, you’re giving away for free. And that keeps people coming again and again, because they have a repeated return for their attention investment.

So, use your blog posts with caution. What you can do, however, is to interlink some of your expertise pages from within your most visited posts. I think one of the masters in interlinking (this is how it’s called) is Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. If you don’t read his blog, you should start now. Seriously.

About Your About Page

Blogs have an “about” page for a very important reason. It’s usually the place your readers reach after you got their attention. It’s your second opportunity to get a seat in their heads (the first one is your blog header, remember?). If you don’t have an about page, your blog is worth half of what it could worth. If you have a “shy” about page, you’d better not having it at all.

The about page should be the place where you should list all your credentials, testimonials and all the other references about you on the interwebs: interviews, collective projects, media appearances and so on. Afraid that you have only a few? Well, go out and mingle, contribute and generate more. Afraid that you have too many? I don’t think there is such a thing like “too many” when it comes to your own credentials or testimonials.

One of the most interesting “about” pages I know (although one of the simplest out there) is Brian Clark’s from Copyblogger.com. Go read it and you’ll understand why he’s a very successful online entrepreneur (not only a famous blogger).

Sidebars And Sales Pages

Blog gods gave you sidebars for a reason. There aren’t just placeholder for your widgets, you know? They are valuable blog real estate that should be used. They offer a parallel visual experience for your readers. As such, they’re much more available and ready to be clicked than the about page.

Usually, sidebars are very good for incentives. You can offer some assets in exchange to some loyalty: the classical free ebook in exchange of a newsletter subscription. But you can also use your sidebars to promote events, products or services you own or you are part of.

Another special case is what I call the “sales” pages. They are not products or services sales pages, but mostly “hire me” places. If you really are selling your presence, as a consultant or handy man, you should definitely use the hire pages as a way to clearly state your expertise. It’s also pretty common to put there your services and your rates.

How This Works And Benefits

Openly stating your expertise makes it easier for the reader to remember you. It will create a strong image in their heads. I name this process: “buying some brain real estate”, identifying a niche with your name. It may seem like you’re very “in your face” with this approach, but believe me, you’re not.

Your readers are floating on a huge information ocean and in order to grab their attention you gotta be determined. I’m not advocating more than 50% of a regular blog page content (including sidebars) to be filled with your expertise, because this will transform your blog into a huge selling page. But it should be there and it should be visible. Many bloggers believe they will be “picked up” because they’re good at what they do. While this may be true, until they don’t make their skills obvious, nobody will even know what they do.

Openly stating your expertise is fundamental for building reputation but is not even remotely the only thing you need for that. On the contrary, if you’re resuming only to openly stating your expertise you will most likely generate the opposite effect of reputation: people will start to avoid you.

This is why we still have 6 more articles to go.

The 7 Links Challenge

Being a constant reader of Problogger.net (for a good 4 years now) I just couldn’t miss the opportunity to take this 7 links challenge Darren posted a few days ago. What is the challenge about? It’s a blogging exercise in which you try to identify 7 links, both in your blog and in other blogs, based on some simple semantics. If “simple semantics” sounds complicated, it’s on purpose, I wanted something intellectual in my first paragraph. My last post (huge and 98% purely technical) freaked out a good part of my readers. The message is simple: nobody stole that Dragos Roua you know, I’m here and I’m doing blogging as usual .

Let’s start the list:

1. Your First Post

That would be a blog post called Blog alive! Why? . It was published in December 2006. At that time I was still a very busy entrepreneur, running an online publishing business in Romania, an that took me all the available time. And then some extra. I mention in the post the Romanian blog I was keeping as part of my active involvement in the market. That blog is gone, but this one is still alive.

2. A Post You Enjoyed Writing The Most

The Sun Always Rises At Dawn – this describes my experience as a Romanian soldier during the Romanian Revolution in 1989. It’s a very personal blog post and every time I read it I’m actually reliving those days. The experience by itself was frightening, many times I was near physical death, but since I managed to survive, it transformed into an incredibly valuable lesson.

3. A Post Which Has A Great Discussion

Not your usual type of discussion, but a really great one, at least for me. Start Your Day In 33 Different Ways – the post describes, as you can easily realize from its title, 33 ways to start your day. Surprisingly though, the comments were about a so-called sexist approach I had in one of those points. I was baffled – and as I write this – I still am, by the effects of our educations on such a simple situation. All I was saying was that women and men are different. And that this is usually a good thing. Read the article and keep the discussion going. I’m not interested in creating a certain outcome for this discussion, I’m simply curious about your opinion.

4. A Post On Someone Else’s Blog That You Wish You’d Written

Undoubtedly How To Discover Your Life Purpose In 20 About Minutes, by Steve Pavlina.  I don’t know why this article stood up in front of me when I thought which one I wish I’d written, but it did. Maybe because 5 years ago, in 2005, very few bloggers had the courage to write such personal stuff. I read many more articles by Steve since then and I also attended his first workshop in Vegas, October 2009. In many aspects I went over and above Steve’s articles and although we do share some common views on life and success, I took quite a distance from his work in the last few years. In a way, his Twitter profile says a lot about his life mission: “I’m a human alarm clock, I wake up people from sleeping their life. Then I duck”. Once you get to the ducking part it’s not useful anymore, but the waking part is invaluable and I’m really grateful for it.

5. A Post With A Title You’re Proud Of

How To Defrag Your Mind In 5 Easy Steps. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to like this title (and the article in itself). Lifehacker.com featured it in a post and to be honest, that was the first time I realized that A LOT of traffic can fireback really bad. You can say I was “lifehacked” the same way they used to say that somebody was “slashdotted”. The amount of traffic I got from lifehacker.com that day put my server on its knees. That doesn’t make the title less interesting, of course.

6. A Post That You Wish More People Had Read

Definitely 6 Degrees Of Integration. I really wish more people would have read the article and participate in the discussion. The article propose a new model for value propagation, one that is different from the usual value propagation channels we’re used to. In a way, it propose a new economical model, one that will mimic the “web of opportunities” based on real needs and not on profit. I still re-read the article every few months and to be honest, I still agree with everything I wrote in it. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

7. Your Most Visited Post Ever

That would be, without any doubt, 100 Ways To Live A Better Life. The post was featured (just hours after it went live) on Delicious and Reddit and also took a very serious option for the first category pages in StumbleUpon. It still gets a few hundreds visits every day and to date, is the only post on my blog with more than 1000 retweets. In January 2010 I wrote an entire ebook based on this post (an ebook which still sells, by the way) and in February I created the printed version of that ebook. The printed version is available on Amazon.com. Interestingly enough, just before writing this article, I noticed that somebody was actually selling this very book on eBay, at double the price. I don’t have anything against people making money out of my products, if they know the market better than me. To be honest, I never thought eBay would be a place to sell a book like this, especially since you can find the exact same book on Amazon. Whatever.

Now, a 7 links challenge won’t be a challenge if you don’t challenge your blogging friends to take it (notice the sparse usage of the word “challenge” in this sentence ). So, without further ado, I’d be really interested to see what are the 7 links of my following 7 blogging friends:

1. Steven Aitchison from StevenAitchison.co.uk

2. Sid Savara from SidSavara.com

3. Farnoosh Brock from ProlifilLiving.com

4. Jonathan Wells from AdvancedLifeSkills.com

5. Robin Easton from NakedInEden.com

6. Mike King from LearnThis.ca

7. Bud Hennekes from PluginId.com

Extra requests (yeah, I’m that curious)

1 bis. Henri Junttila from WakeUpCloud.com

2 bis. Armen Shirvanian from TimelessInformation.com

3 bis. Colin Wright from ExileLifeStyle.com

4 bis. David Damron from TheMinimalistPath.com

5 bis. Adam Baker from ManVsDebt.com

6 bis. Tim Brownson from ADaringAdventure.com

7 bis. Dirk de Bruin (aka Diggy) from UpgradeReality.com

The extra-extra request

Kristi from Kikolani.com

How To Play The Game Of Blogging

After I sold my company, 2 years ago, I knew there will be some inactive time for me. I mean, once you’re an important player and you sell your part of the territory, expect that you’ll be asked to take a break for a while. After all, it’s not ok to start to compete against your buyers the next day after the selling. I won’t go into the technical details of what a “non-compete” agreement should contain, because this is not the main point of the article. The main point of this article is to share what I’ve learned by playing the game of blogging.

The Beginning

The only thing I was able to grow and maintain on the online field, after I sold my business, was my personal blog. No more markets, contracts, niche strategies or online alliances. No more online business: just a personal blog. Although I did blog every now and then even before I sold the company, I never did “professionally”. All of a sudden, the selling of my company became a great opportunity to begin something completely new. With all the associated risks of starting something from scratch: not knowing the right tools, making mistakes, not being a native English speaker and so on.

The Lessons

This blog, as you know it now, was started in October 2008, under a Romanian domain dragosroua.com. In July 2009 I changed the domain to dragosroua.com. That was one of the lessons I had to learn the hard way: if you blog in English, keeping your blog under a localized domain name is not ok. You do need a .com, otherwise you’ll end up in a secondary index of Google.

A few months ago, the blog was moved to another hosting facility, outside Romania (in United States, I’m happily using the cloud hosting package of RackSpace). That was another lesson I had to learn the hard way: the physical location of your hosting company influences your ranking in search engines (at least Google).

As of January 2009 I started to actively promote the blog, becoming active (some say that I become even too active ) in social media outlets like Twitter, FaceBook and StumbleUpon. Until then I was under the firm impression that “if you write it, they will come”. Another huge mistake. You gotta promote your blog, otherwise you’ll never reach to your audience. Why? Because blogging is like any other publishing business, only it’s taking place in an incredibly crowded market. There are literally hundreds of millions of blogs out there. I can hardly imagine another business on this Earth where you have such an incredible number of competitors. So, if you want to really make your voice heard, you gotta work for it.

Many of these lessons, mistakes and other interesting things, like monetization and promotion, were described in two milestone series: The First 6 Months Of Blogging and The First Year Of Blogging. Feel free to read them at your leisure if you’re interested in some historical data about my blog. Now, let’s get to the meat: how to play the game of blogging?

Know Your Availability

If you’re into blogging, you gotta know beforehand how much time are you willing to allocate to it. All those stories about how a stay at home mom become instantly famous after she published a blog are bullshit. Pardon my French.

Don’t get me wrong, you can get lucky pretty early and get featured on some of the largest social media sites like Digg and Delicious, and get enormous amounts of traffic in a very short time. It can get up to several dozens of thousands unique users in a week interval.

But that’s not success. You may have 5 minutes of fame and then you’re out in the cloud. Nobody will know your name anymore. Being successful as a blogger means to control your exposure, to predict the impact of your work and to constantly measure and influence the results. And that requires time. It requires discipline and commitment.

Starting a blog “only to see how it works” will never work. You gotta commit to it at least one year – in my persona experience, at least – before jumping to conclusions. Blogging is not a part time job. Unless you want a part time job that will pay you nothing.

So, the most important thing about playing the game of blogging is to know your availability.

Know Your Expertise

The second thing that’s very important after your physical availability is your expertise. You gotta be good at something. Even if you’re a stay at home mom, you gotta be good at this: being a stay at home mom. If you’re a programmer, you gotta be good at programming. If you write about self-improvement, be honest about what it takes to be in the self-improvement field.

Why is that so important? Again, because of the competition. When you compete against dozens of millions of blogs, you can’t fake it. You can’t pretend you’re a guru in some field and then just copy and paste other people articles. It won’t take you far.

On the contrary, it will take you down pretty fast. One of the most subtle mechanisms of blogging is what I call “reputation”. It’s a very special mix of expertise, trust and persistence. If you’re good at what you do, if you’re honest and you’re writing on your blog for a reasonable amount of time, you’ll get reputation.

And, believe it or not, reputation is the cornerstone of a blogging business. Not traffic. Not AdSense. Not affiliate deals. All of these are just tools or metrics. The core of the business is reputation. That will make your audience buy the products you create or refer. Keep this word in mind: reputation.

And, without, expertise, reputation is literally impossible to be created.

Know Your Audience

The third important thing in the blogging game is your audience. The fundamental difference between the traditional publishing and blogging is the interactive part of it. Blogging is not unidirectional, like a printed magazine. It’s open and alive. You get in touch with your readers instantly, via comments. And they want to talk to you, the real person behind the blog. They don’t want a corporation, they want a regular guy who’s honestly sharing his life. That’s what gives them inspiration, motivation, hope.

At some point during your blogging activity you’ll make a great discovery: you’re not writing for yourself, you’re writing for your readers. As simple and stupid this discovery may seem, it’s an incredible attitude shifter. The moment you’ll realize you’re sharing for other people, you’ll change the way you blog.

You’ll become interested in their needs, rather than in yours. You’ll become interested in their reactions and their attitudes and those reactions and attitudes will become triggers for your next blog posts. You’ll create a multidirectional, alive and useful product. You’ll create a real, significant change in the world. And that’s the only thing that really counts at the end of the day, when all the traffic and revenue stories are told and forgot.

By knowing your audience, you can evaluate your real impact to the world.

Identify Partners, You Can’t Do It Without Them

The fourth most important thing at playing the blogging game is about partnerships. You won’t get far without partnerships. Why? Again, the main answer is competition.

The blogs ecosystem is an incredibly complex web of interactions, links, authority and trends. This web is changing constantly and the chances that you will survive as an isolated blogger are incredibly small. You need a solid team of partners who will support you. Partners that you will support too, enforcing the power of your links in the blogging ecosystem.

But there’s another reason besides competition for partnerships and that’s also about reputation. Many times you’re evaluated by the friends you have rather than by your own deeds. And in such a very complex web like the blogging web, when time is extremely precious, you simply take for granted some references without verifying them. And that’s where your partners are starting to matter big time. They will extend your authority and reputation onto you. And of course, you will extend your own authority and reputation onto them.

The way you’re choosing your partners is also a statement of your own values and sometimes tells more about yourself than what you’re actually doing.

Hydrate Yourself: It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint

I can’t emphasize enough on this one. Although if you took the time to actually read all the first 4 principles of the blogging game, you should have understand this by now, I’ll say it again anyway: it’s a long, long journey. Whenever you get tired, demotivated, hopeless or just sad, remember you’re not at the end of the journey yet.

Just keep playing the game.

How To Create A Blog Posts Ideas Incubator

One of the most popular blog posts I ever wrote is 100 Ways to Improve Your Blog. Although it’s been more than 7 months since I’ve published it, I still get a few re-tweets per week and a decent number of monthly thank you emails. For a single blog post, that’s a lot.

If I would have to pick only one tip from all 100, one tip that drastically improved my blogging performance, that would be “keep an idea incubator”. Keeping and managing a posts ideas incubator impacted my blogging in so many positive ways: I never run out of interesting things to blog about, I always have a bird view of my blog topics (hence, I’m able to sketch my potential audience in more accurate way) and I’m constantly feeding my blog with fresh content. Which, to be honest, is the most important advantage of all.

What follows is the description of my own posts ideas incubator. I don’t advocate the use of a specific application, feel free to use whatever device/application you want, but I do believe that following a certain structure and strategy is beneficial. I’ll start with the strategies of capturing, will follow with strategies of inbox management and using a blogging setup, and will finish with a short tutorial on how to use the ideas incubator you just created. Be aware that this post is rather long, more than 2500 words.

How To Capture Blog Posts Ideas

I don’t know about you, but I get the most interesting and exciting blog posts ideas while I’m driving. Or while I’m in the middle of a conversation. Or while I’m exercising. The bottom line is that I get the best blog posts ideas while I’m NOT at the computer. After a few frustrating episodes (in which I even tried some mild self-hypnosis in order to recall “that brilliant idea” I had this morning in the car) I gave up trying to remember those bits and pieces and set up a capturing environment.

I soon realized that I need capturing devices for only two environments: mobile and computer.

1. Mobile Capturing Devices

I own an iPhone and I use it. Two of the most used applications on my iPhone (apart from all the social media apps for Twitter and Facebook) are iBlueSky and Voice Recorder.

1a. iBlueSky Mind Mapping

Every time I have more than 5-6 minutes available, I use iBlueSky for capturing, a nifty mind-mapping app for the iPhone. I start with the post idea as the main node and then draw as many nodes are necessary until I squeeze out all the juice.

After I finish, I send the generated mind map as an email attachment. That’s all.

Mind mapping is my preferred way of capturing ideas. Most of the time, the nodes are becoming blog posts paragraphs and their titles are becoming paragraph titles. It’s like I’m able to create the blueprint of the future article in one run.

1b. iPhone Voice Recorder

But unfortunately, I’m not always able to get 5-6 minutes in the same block (I’m pretty shocked my self while reading this, believe me ) so I’m forced to just use 1 or 2 minutes while waiting in line at the grocery store, for instance.

That’s the time when I quickly fire up the iPhone Voice Recorder and start talking. If you’re not used to talk to a microphone (without having a real person listening on the other side, that is) it will feel strange. Luckily, I worked as a radio anchor for 7 years, so that wasn’t a problem.

What was a problem, though, was how to look like I’m having a conversation and not talking to myself. I confess I wasn’t able to sort this out, yet. Anyway, when I’m in a crowded place and use the Voice Recorder, I try to make it look like I’m having a short conversation with somebody else. I know, it’s silly

2. Computer Capturing Devices

Some of the blog posts ideas are popping out when I’m working at something else, on my laptop. For that, I’m using Quicksilver, the MacJournal shortcut and self-addressed emails.

2a. Quicksilver

Quicksilver is the swiss army knife of Mac. Unfortunately, it seems that the developer is not supporting it anymore, but as it is, is still a very usable app and, if you ask me, a gem. I won’t go into details about the functionality of it, feel free to do a search on my blog abut Quicksilver (yes, I wrote a few articles about it in the past) and you’ll know more.

So, every time I’m in the middle of something and I have an idea, I just hit Ctrl + Space, Quicksilver window comes in, I hit “.” (a dot) and start typing.

After I’m done, I send the text to myself as an email (more on that at point 3b), create a separate text file with it or just put it on the screen with big fonts. Sometimes it helps to look at the idea in big fonts again before saving it.

2b. MacJournal Shortcut

MacJournal also features a keyboard shortcut, so every time I feel my idea will be pretty close to a blog post (as opposed to other types of ideas, like blog post series, guest post ideas, strategies or just interesting bits and pieces) I use this shortcut directly.

Hitting “Alt + Spacebar” brings in this little window and I can safely add the idea directly to my blogging journal. Note that I still need to get back to it and do some mark up around, in order for the idea to qualify for a “Next Posts” journal. If this sounds a little bit fuzzy, just go to the “How To Create And Use A Blogging Setup” paragraph and follow the link for the original post, it will all fall into pieces.

2c. Self-addressed Emails

There are some times where I’m too busy to check all my inboxes during the day. During those times the only inbox I check regularly (apart from my Twitter stream), is my mail inbox. So it kinda makes sense to send self-addressed emails every time I have an idea. Maybe I don’t have time to look into MacJournal, but I will surely look into my mail inbox.

I use whatever comes handy at the moment, if I have the mail client open I will use it, if not, I will use a fast Quicksilver shortcut.

Later on, I will put the snippet into its appropriate place.

How To Empty Your Inboxes

And with that, we’re coming to the next part of my ideas incubator: inbox emptying strategies. An idea you left on a dusted shelf will never become a blog post. So, capturing ideas is useless if you don’t set up an emptying routine, in which you’ll bring all those inboxes to zero, transferring the ideas to a workable setup.

After more than a year of having this into place I established the following routine: I empty the mobile inboxes every week and the desktop inboxes (email and MacJournal, that is) whenever I feel like.

As you can see, the mobile inboxes are the ones that carries around most of the idea traffic, so I have to keep them in good shape. On the desktop, although it sounds I get a little sloppy, I’m not: I get in touch with MacJournal almost daily so every time I see empty spots, I add the necessary meta data to make the blog posts available for writing.

Weekly Reviews

This is a concept borrowed from GTD (I was a big fan of GTD, although lately I’m just using a slightly downsized version of it). Every week I set up between half an hour and an hour and just empty my iPhone Voice Recorder. Since all the mind maps created with iBlueSky are going directly to my mail inbox, there’s no need to do something special about that. Every few months I delete the old mind maps on the iPhone to make room for the new ones, but other than that, iBlueSky doesn’t require special attention.

Emptying the iPhone Voice Recorder is a little slow, because you have to pause an restart the app as you type along. But it’s also very useful. There is a big difference between the ideas sketched as mind maps, and the ideas “spilled” in the Voice Recorder. Sometimes I spend around 15 minutes just to make the idea understandable.

On the other hand, some of the sentences I record live are sometimes left untouched and become some of the best blog post openers or finals. I guess this is called “spontaneity”

How To Create And Use A Blogging Setup

I extensively wrote about how to create and use a blogging setup using MacJournal, so I won’t rehash those ideas here. I will only give you a short description of what a blogging setup is and how to combine it with a blog posts ideas incubator.

A blogging setup is an integrated environment in which you can list all your past and future posts, along with some meta data. You can also write new posts and edit the old ones. Ideally, a blogging environment will let you see all your future posts (or next posts, as I call them) in one place, so you can focus only on them. Basically, on my blogging, I have a list with all my published posts, with the posts I want to write, along with some meta-data which helps me quickly identifying what I have to work on. Some of these posts are in various stages: underway, needs polishing or completed. Think at the WordPress “drafts” concepts on steroids and you’ll have a pretty accurate image of what’s a blogging setup. (If you want to know exactly how I did this with MacJournal you can check out the above blog post.)

Emptying the inboxes should always be done in conjunction with your blogging setup. In other words, you should always put the articles ideas in the first spot where you’re going to use them. Creating separated folders or files somewhere on your hard-disk just to put some “someday / maybe” blog posts ideas is the best way to… kill those ideas. What’s important to know is that once you finished importing an idea into this blogging setup, you should forget about it. Delete it from the device (iPhone Voice Recorder or mail client) and keep the focus only on the blogging setup.

Another thing to be careful about is to do a pre-search on every captured ides, looking for duplicates. Sometimes, especially if I didn’t wrote that idea, I find myself re-capturing it again and again. In other words, I had that idea a few months ago, but never wrote about it, so in my head is still a “new” one, so I capture it. But once I confront the content of my idea inboxes with the blogging setup, I can see that I have a duplicate.

How To Use The Ideas Incubator

Now, let’s put all the pieces together.

1. Make It A Habit

The most important advice: create the habit of doing it. Just be aware that you do have the tools to capture any idea you have at any moment. Fantasizing about that idea, trying to concoct some catchy paragraphs in your head, that alone won’t work. It’s far more better to capture the idea and then liberate you thoughts flow. You can always get back to it when you’ll have more time.

2. Don’t Be Shy

If you created the habit, don’t be shy. As I told you, I still feel rather strange when I’m filling up my voice recorder in a public space, but I think it’s far more important to have that idea shaped than the impression I make on some random people I may never see again.

3. Do Some Master Cleaning

Every once in a while try to purge your blogging setup, getting rid of some clutter. Maybe some ideas are not worth your time anymore, maybe some of them were addressed in other posts. Don’t let the empty number of potential blog posts to fool you. For instance, I have around 100 new potential blog posts available at this moment in my ideas incubator, but the total number of imported ideas was around 250. The 150 extra were eliminated in time. I think the total number of available ideas will vary with your niche and blogging approach, but in my case I saw that going over 100 is not manageable. 100 ideas available at any moment seems like the normal number.

4. Draft The Title First

You should always try to draft your blog post title the moment you’re emptying your inboxes. In my experience, this is the most important thing not only for better remembering what you had in mind, but for the future development of the post. Not to mention the impact on SEO optimization.

5. Be Flexible

You should not be afraid to jump from one idea to another. This may sound simplistic, but in fact it’s a completely different approach from the standard “scheduled” blog posts approach. For instance, if you plan to write this week about motivation, you pick two ideas about motivation and start to write the articles. But half-way you feel like you’re not going to make it, something else looks more appealing at the moment. Well, in this moment you should take a look at your ideas incubator and find something that will make you feel inspired. Yes, you won’t write 2 articles on motivation this week, but you’ll write 2 genuine articles (because you wanted to write about those topics) and you’ll also feel good about it. I’m a huge fan of writing about things that are making you feel good, as opposed to a fixed approach and a strict schedule.

6. Be Fresh

And with that comes the last point: keep a variety of topics. Again, this is going against mainstream which tells you to pick a niche and stick with it. Even if you write on a very narrow niche, don’t be afraid to pick new perspectives on that niche. For instance, I write mainly about personal development, but I do share a lot of so called “technical” advice on a variety of topics: travel, online business, or, like this very post, blogging. All these are in fact facets of the same thing: getting better every day.

***

Keeping a blog posts incubator ideas is one of the most useful things I was able to do to improve my blogging performance. Many beginner bloggers are expecting to have a constant flow of topics and to keep the same writing pace for months, if not for years. From my experience, only an infinitesimal percent of bloggers are keeping their initial writing pace. After a few weeks or months their motivations is starting to decline, many of them are hitting the “writers block” wall and their blogging performance is rapidly decreasing. What’s even worse, is that keeping the same writing pace, without backing it up with some editorial strategy and analysis (which a posts ideas incubator will heavily enforce), will never guarantee your success.

To be honest, a blog posts ideas incubator in itself will never guarantee your success either, but at least you’ll be in a better position for that. It’s like carrying the right stuff in your backpack while preparing to climb the Everest: if you don’t have the right stuff with you, no matter how determined you are, you’ll never reach to the top. But if you have the right tools, AND the right mindset (of you can read more about here) your success is literally guaranteed.

100 Tips On How To Write Huge List Posts

So far I wrote 4 “100 ways to” kind of list posts: 100 Ways To Live A Better Life, 100 Ways To Screw Up Your Life, 100 Ways To Improve Your Blog and 100 Things I Did In 2009. All of them got featured on delicious, stumbleupon, hackernews, reddit or other popular places on the internet. They still bring in tons of traffic. No, I lied. They bring in tens of tons of traffic. Crafting such a list post is not an easy task. So I thought to put together 100 tips on how to create a “100 ways to” kind of list. Expect some disguised humor along more serious tips and, generally speaking, do take this list with a little bit of salt…

1. Become Immune To Rejection

List posts are cool. but list posts are also way too common nowadays. If you truly want to write a successful “100 ways to” post then prepare to face some rejection. Primarily, from yourself. Unconsciously, if you’re an experienced blogger, you hate lists. So work out this fear and start working.

2. Split It Into Smaller Tasks

Fundamental: work your list post in smaller steps, by writing every day several items. You’ll hopefully avoid some blocking episodes and you could also assess progress over several days (or weeks). After all, even a million dollars is made by adding 10 chunks of 100.000…

3. Use Mind Mapping

Start with some general notions about your list and take it from there. From my experience, after the mind map gets bigger than 30-40 branches, you need to transfer it on a text editor. But it gives you a pretty good start.

4. Chose A Rich Topic

If you want to make a “100 ways of chopping potatoes” list post, chances are that you will never get to finish it. The topic is too narrow. It’s almost impossible to find 100 different ways to chop potatoes. Try to go for wider topics, like carrots (joking of course, now serious), blogging, motivation or inspiration.

5. Prepare To Read More

If you are going to write a “100 ways to” list post, you are also going to read it, adjust it, correct it and proof read it. Meaning you’re going to read much more than you’re used to. If you do try to write your list post without reading it after, the results may be totally unpredictable.

6. Write Short Explanations

Don’t go for a dry bullet list, take the time to write something for every item. But keep the explanation short. Like this one.

7. Flip A Coin

Whenever you hesitate to add another item to the list post, kill the suspense with a coin. Flip it fast, possibly while you’re smiling. If you win, add the item, if you lose, rephrase and still add the item. It’s a “100 ways to” list, goddamit, we need every frigging thing we can imagine, can’t afford playing stupid games with items and coins.

8. Link To Yourself

A “100 ways to” list post will surely bring in more traffic than a usual post. So, it’s a very good place to insert links to some of your most interesting articles. Just make sure the links actually have something in common with the main topic.

9. Be Patient

Don’t expect a “100 ways to” list to be baked in the same amount of time you spend for a regular blog post. It could take many days, or even weeks. The trick is to be patient here and don’t lose the magic final number (that would be the 100th tip) from your sight. It will pay off.

10. If You Write It, They Will Bookmark It

A “100 ways to” list post takes much longer to be read than a usual post. Initially, people will just bookmark it and never get back to it until the common fear of reading something for more than 15 seconds is gone. Some will never get back to read it (that fear is pretty nasty) but they will bookmark it for sure.

11. Start More Than One “100 ways to” List Post

Switching from one list post to another will be good for your focus. If the lists are on slightly different topics, it will be even better, because you will most likely avoid writer block totally by constantly challenging your creativity in different areas.

12. Make a Table Of Contents Out Of It

If at the current moment you have written more than 100 posts, have a good topic distribution and your list of “100 ways to” is close enough to what you’re usually writing, it will act also as a Table Of Contents of your blog, so link to yourself. The first links will get more visibility so think twice which items are you putting in the first third of your list post.

13. Brainstorm It

Let some of your friends or your colleagues in. Make it sound like fun and start writing down ideas. Brainstorming will not only give your more material but it will also have this decluttering effect on your mind. You’ll actually start to see more ideas and you’ll do that much faster. It’s like cleaning up your lenses.

14. Play With Words

Start playing with the words. If it’s a list post about motivation, start writing down motivation synonyms. If it’s about entrepreneurship, start writing down synonyms for entrepreneurship. Seeing the same thing from different perspective will reveal new ideas. This technique is especially useful in the late stage, when you already had a lot of the items nailed down.

15. Call A Random Phone Number And Ask For Advice

Not to be repeated more than once per list. Chances that you will actually bump into the same person you called last time are incredibly high. If you can hide after a fat fingering mistake for the first one, doing the same thing twice will put you in a very favorable position to receive a police inquiry for harassment.

16. Try To Insert A Random, Not Related Item

But do it only while you’re working on it. If you let it slip into the real list post, sooner or later they’ll catch you. But having a ghost in your draft will make things so much interesting. I guarantee that from a certain level you won’t know for sure which one is the ghost and which one is the real one. Annoying, but funny. Somehow.

17. Re-read Your Past 100 List Posts

Not only as a source of inspiration, but especially useful to avoid repetition. 100 pieces of a puzzle is a big number and it’s pretty easy to get caught in a writing routine. Keeping an eye on your older list posts will raise your awareness and hopefully will also boost your self-esteem to the point that you’re actually finishing your current list post.

18. Be Useful

If your list post will hugely benefit the green little men from Mars and no one on Earth will find any immediate use for it, don’t expect to become popular. Getting in touch first with the green little men and nicely asking if they really need such a list will surely help. More than once, the answer will be that you need to be really useful.

19. Chop It Off

Make it a list of 77 tips if you can’t find more items. Or a list of 33 ways. Or even 7 traits. At least you tried. Be proud. It’s your list post.

20. Read Other List Posts

Especially in completely different niches than yours. It will help remove your unconscious blocks and refresh your perspective. Ideas are everywhere, it’s your focus which is not trained enough to spot them.

21. Inhale. Exhale

I know you’re focused and you’re chasing that idea at full speed. That’s not a reason to forgot breathing.

22. Re-read Your 3rd Grade Diary

If you had one. Meeting a younger you is always enlightening, You have no idea how many things you forgot you know, how many dreams you had and how many skills you developed. If don’t had a journal in the 3rd grade maybe it’s time to start one now, isn’t it?

23. Knock On A Stranger’s Door

Risky. But fun. Try knocking at someone else’s door and ask for some advice. You may end up writing a list post about 100 ways to escape after knocking on a complete stranger’s door. That counts too, right?

24. Twitter Is Your Friend

Look for quotes, sayings, conversations or interesting links. Twitter has a fairly high noise to signal ratio, but with some patience you can still isolate a few ideas. Or, at least, you’ll procrastinate in a very trendy way.

25. Isolate From Distractions

Close the doors, the windows, the cell phone. Close the TV, the radio, close your eyes (just for a few seconds, to get in the mood) and your mouth. The only things still running should be your laptop and your brains. Now unleash your inspiration and start writing.

26. Let It Cook For A While

Don’t try to publish the list post immediately. Let it cook for a while. Re-read it in a few days. It’s not that you will make it better, that’s a pretty obvious effect. But you may get a few new ideas for some future “100 items” list posts too.

27. Establish A Reasonably High Daily Batch Of Items

Try to write at least 5 to 10 items per day. In my experience, if you write less than 5 per day you will actually kill the list post. The effort of re-reading your last days work will be higher than what you need for those 3 items. Establish a reasonably high batch and stick with it.

28. Sing A Song

Like in trying to remembering one, not just humming wordless. Your creative mind is highly associative, so every time you get it out of the comfort zone, it will bring up new connections. Now, what song was that? Humm, ta, ri, ra… yeah, I got it .

29. Be One Of Your Readers

Try to impersonate one of your readers. What exactly would somebody expect to read on your blog? What are his expectations? Wear his shoes for a few minutes. That will surely open a flow of new ideas. You write for them, in the end, not for you.

30. Watch The News

Use it for its reverse effect. I usually watch the news only to be completely turned off by all the violence, stupidity and shallowness that exudes from TV news nowadays. After a few minutes, I am so happy to return to my list post.

31. Play With Your Kids

If you have kids, of course. If not, observe some in the park. I am always amazed by how easily kids are creating new worlds around them. It seems that someway along the way we lost this ability.

32. Play Monopoly

Or any other game, as long as you’re playing it with your friends. When they lose, propose to exchange roles (as in you becoming the loser) if they can give you several ideas for your blog post. You’ll be surprised how many of your friends hate to lose at games.

33. Ride The Subway And Ask Everybody What Time Is It

The first 4-5 people will try to be honest with you and tell the exact time. But when the rest of them will see you asking the same question over and over, will want to know you why you’re doing it. That will force your mind to find some really, really creative answers.

34. Listen To A Completely Different Kind Of Music

If you’re into rock, go symphonic. If you’re into symphonic, go for country. If you’re country, go for pop. You got the idea, something completely out of your audible comfort zone. Don’t stop it until you find at least 10 new ideas. Which usually happens in the first 3 minutes.

35. Walk Barefoot Around Your House

Well, this may not bring you ideas about how to write a “100 ways to” list post, but it will cool you off for sure. Especially during winter.

36. Practice Your Lists

You can keep writing smaller lists just for keeping yourself pumped up. Small lists, but somehow related. For instance, I wrote a list of 7 Ways To Say No, followed by a list of 14 Ways To Say Yes. It’s much easier to start something bigger after that.

37. Try It In Different Languages

If you’re writing a list about cooking, look up the word “cooking” in a dictionary. In how many ways people are able to say “cooking” around the world? I bet in at least 120. Well, what stops you to find 100 ways to say it too?

38. Make A Plan

And what I mean by a plan is to establish a clear deadline and reachable milestones. Start with a target of 2 weeks, writing at least 5 new items each working day. In 20 days, you’ll have 100 items. That’s what I call a plan.

39. Set A Posting Frequency

In my experience, “100 ways to” lists are pretty time intensive. Not only for you, but for your readers too. So, I would never schedule more than 1 huge list each month. It’s not only taking a lot of energy, but it will also scare your readers away if you do it more often.

40. Chose A Topic You’re Comfortable With

Write about something you really know or heavily experienced lately. If you chose a spectacular topic, but you don’t have any idea what is all about in that niche, you won’t be able to deliver, even if you do all the research and planning in the world.

41. Brag About It

Talk to your friends about your intentions, tweet it or post it to your wall on Facebook. Up to the point you’re getting really uncomfortable with the potential feeling of rejection you’d get if you don’t put your arse to work and deliver that damn list.

42. Make A Challenge Out Of It

This is how I started, by being challenged by one of my blogger friends. First, it seemed impossible to write a 100 items list. The, it started to feel plausible. Then I started to work and it became real.

43. Improvise

Write whatever comes to your mind, even if it’s not related to your list. Put it into bullets, to make it look like a list. And once you’re on a roll, writing on topic, just delete the garbage.

44. Go From A To B In 5 Steps

That’s a great exercise to fuel your creativity. Open a dictionary and pick word, let’s say word “A”. Write it down. Then open it again and pick word “B”. Write it down. Then make up a story to go from word “A” to word “B” in 5 steps. Here is a detailed post describing the process.

45. Break The Main Topic In Subtopics

If the topic allows that, try to break the list into chapters. I did it with my 100 Ways To Improve Your Blog list, where I split it into content, promotion, layout areas. It will speed up things considerably.

46. Keep It In A Fixed Form

Try to write a fixed number of words for each explanation. Although it seems more difficult, it actually forces you to maintain a writing discipline. Break it only when it helps the item being more visible, like item number 6.

47. Go For The Smallest Denominator

With this pompous title I only mean that you should break processes in smaller parts and write an item for each part. If what you think is: “be creative”, break it into specific techniques, like item number 44 or 46 in this very list. A generalist “Be creative” has no value in a list, go into details.

48. Be Honest With Yourself

If you can’t make a list of 100 items, that’s ok. Better be happy you tried and failed than to concoct a fake list which will be spotted instantly and make you more harm than good. The opposite is also true: if you honestly feel you can deliver, go all the way to the top.

49. Count To 100 In Your Head

It will make the whole task easier to understand and it will give you a bird-view of what are you are trying to accomplish. Provided you’re able to reach to 100 and don’t fall asleep, as I usually do, somewhere between 77 and 85. Your mileage may vary.

50. Celebrate The First Half

That would be number 50, if you didn’t get it . Once you’re here, your job is half done. Praise this. Have a drink. Take a break. From now on, your number of finished items can only be greater than the number of items waiting to be finished. You’re almost there.

51. Don’t Lose Focus

it’s very easy to be distracted and move your focus on other tasks. Don’t do it. Force yourself into making this list happening. Put a post it on your computer screen. Glue a piece of paper on the ceiling, so it would be the first thing you’ll see in the morning. Stay there.

52. Enjoy The Process

If you don’t find a way to actually take pleasure in writing this list, it would be extremely difficult. Feel good about what you write, feel relaxed and at ease. Try to visualize yourself as an A-list blogger if this will make things easier. Do whatever it takes to enjoy the process.

53. Bribe Yourself

Put small incentives at the end of a writing task to mark the victory. Don’t get them until you finish what you planned to. If there’s little or no motivation, maybe a plain and consistent bribe would act as an incentive. Think at something you just couldn’t resist .

54. Bribe Others To Support You

Bring in some other people and promise you will do something for them if they’ll support you in any way you chose: from cheering up to forcing you. It’s surprising how many people you’ll find around, ready to help you for a small service from your part.

55. Start A Conversation About It

It may be on a forum, on other social media website or at the office. Don’t do a full brainstorming, just ask around other people about their opinion. That enough will bring you a lot of unexpected inspiration.

56. Write The Numbers First

Like empty placeholders for your items. It will help you visualize how many things you still have to write and give you a subtle sense of accomplishment. One by one, you’re getting there. Isn’t that wonderful? (Start this after you’re passed number 50, otherwise it can get pretty depressing).

57. Ask Your Boss For Advice

I don’t think you’ll get a meaningful answer, but it will make your adrenaline level go up for sure. Alternatively, if you don’t have a boss, you can try asking your spouse for the same advice. If you’re not married, well… why on Earth are you losing time writing stupid lists of “100 ways to”, when you should be out, partying?

58. Do It On The Road

Have a smartphone with you and stop whenever you seem to have an idea: write it down, email it to yourself, or just record it if your phone uses a voice recorder. On a side note, I do this on a regular basis to capture ideas for my blog posts.

59. Don’t Write Ideas On A Napkin

While you’re having a romantic dinner, for instance. Even if your brain is so excited that it seem to come up with a new idea every 10 seconds. It’s rude, totally disrespectful and extremely non-ecological. Use a phone instead.

60. Scrabble It

If you know scrabble, you know what I mean. If you don’t, go out and buy one, it’s pretty cheap and it will pay out well in the future. Even if you don’t come up with a decent list of items after you played some serious scrabble, at least you had a really good time.

61. Don’t Take It Too Serious

It will burn you out. A list of “100 ways to” is not an easy task (I have the feeling I said that before) but it’s not something impossible either. You’ll make till the end, so you’d better try to keep an open and light attitude. Even if the list won’t be spectacular, you still did it big time.

62. Journal While Writing It

Journaling in itself is a powerful self-discovery tool, so using it while you’re on a list of “100 ways to” seems pretty logical. What I noticed in my personal history is that the first 30-40 items are the most easy to write, while the last 10 are the most rewarding.

63. Start A Facebook Fan Page Before You Publish It

Just in case you hit big, you know. By the time you wake up from all that Digg or Delicious or StumbleUpon euphoria, somebody else may take your post name, start a group, do a few live workshops on the topic and even launch a book. You’ve been warned!

64. Make A Drawing Of It

This is not mind mapping, it’s drawing. One of the simplest creativity enhancement techniques: draw a representation of your object. In whatever form you want. Do it until your mental flow is unblocked and you can find at least 3-4 new ideas.

65. Don’t Fake It

Don’t mix various pieces of floating info from the internet hoping they will eventually glue together in a balanced product. Because they won’t. Write your list item by item, be inspired by others and creative, but don’t fake it. Generally speaking, faking is a huge waste of time.

66. Read Riddles

Two reasons: have fun and push your mind to think more and in unusual ways. I’m reading riddles every time I have a little bit of a block (fortunately, this is extremely rare) and every time works like a charm. What is black and white and read all over? Your “100 ways to” list, of course

67. Pick A Random Word, From A Random Page, From A Random Book

Close your eyes, pick a book, open it and put your finger on a random page. Ignore “and”, “or”, “to” and alike. See what you get. If you’re a normal, balanced and aware person, I bet you’re going to get just a… random word. Isn’t that wonderful? Now back to work on your list, you lazy player!

68. Make A Twitter List

And add random people to it up to 100. It shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes. Use the public timeline, not yours. Then read their tweets one by one, up to 100. If your list feels like what you just read, that means you still have work to do: just make another list.

69. Read The Comments On Your Blog

No, you’re not going to get some miraculous idea by reading your blog comments, but at least you’re going to realize that some people genuinely care about you. Even if their comments are angry, they do care about you. There’s still hope. Keep on writing.

70. Try To Do 100 Pushups

If you’re a normal, average person, you may stop around 30 or 35. That will show you what your brains endures while you’re stressing it so much with your list. But if you do all 100 pushups, it means  you don’t really need to write a “100 ways to” list. You’re ok, chicks are going to dig you anyway.

71. Wear Sunglasses In Your Room For Half An Hour

Also wear some soft but solid clothes, just in case you’re going to hit some furniture. I guarantee you won’t have any significant breakthrough during this half an hour, but the second you’ll remove the sunglasses, everything will be enlightening. Seriously.

72. Call Your Ex

Tell him/her this is a matter of life and death and if he/she will help you just this time, you’re going to finally respect that restriction order. If he/she didn’t have the time to change phone number since your last “100 ways to” list, I guarantee this will work.

73. Call A Pizza Delivery Service

And tell them you’re on the roof, ready to jump, if you don’t get a free large pepperoni pizza in the next 30 minutes. This is what I call a win-win situation: you either get tons of brilliant ideas to go on with your life (pizza delivery boys are really good at that), either a free pizza.

74. Write 100 Different Names

That’s one of the simplest creativity exercises ever. Hint: you can go alphabetically and write a few names for each letter. Finishing such a list will somehow boost your confidence or at least make you believe that there really are “100 things” lists out there.

75. Train By Solving A Puzzle First

A 50 pieces puzzle will be enough for starters, but once you get good at it, start on 100 or 200 pieces. Seriously, writing a huge list post is very similar with solving a 100 pieces puzzle: you have the picture in your head, but it will take like forever to match all the pieces together.

76. Prepare A List Of Excuses

Like real life excuses for all the social events you’re going to miss and all the meetings you’ll never attend to, because you’re busy writing. Alternatively, you could start writing a “100 ways to excuse yourself when you’re late because you’re writing a ’100 ways to’ list post” kind of list. Makes sense?

77. Think Lateral

If your list is going to have 100 items, you better make it THE list in that niche. So think outside of the box. Go lateral, go vertical or oblique if this is opening new perspectives on your topic. After all, you don’t want to make a silly list about how to write lists, right?

78. Solve A Problem With Your List

Your list must solve a real life problem, otherwise, no matter how well written is, how hilarious the description are or how good your SEO strategy is implemented, it will not live. It will not even take off. Solve a real problem. For instance, genuinely try to help people write huge lists.

79. Mix In Some Humor

Joking will always draw people in. Being funny and entertaining is a key element in making such a list popular. Even if your topic is serious, if you don’t mix some humor in, surprising your readers, the list will be dull and gloomy. Dull and gloomy does not sell. Humor sells.

80. Stop Asking Yourself: “Why 100?”

We don’t ask that. We take that for granted. For starters, 100 is a pretty cool number. Sounds round and unabridged. It exhales a sensation of purity and completeness. (See how I desperately try to concoct some reasons? That’s because there aren’t really any).

81. Meditate On It

If you practice meditation on a regular basis, this shouldn’t be difficult. If you don’t, try to empty your mind and focus only on the topic of the list. Don’t try to find answers or ideas, just focus on the topic. Breathe in, breathe out. And, by all means, try not to levitate, you have work to do!

82. Watch For Coincidences

This long writing process will span over a few days or weeks and I advise that during this time span you should be extremely aware of any coincidences occurring around. Follow them. You’ll be surprised to find out that there aren’t really any coincidences, there are only signs.

83. Think SEO

This is a very important step. Target your keywords and place them in the first third of your post. I don’t really know why the first third, but it seems to work. Now, can you count how many times I had “100 ways to” keywords in this post? Write the answer in the comments.

84. Get A New Haircut

You’re going to be a completely different person after you finish this list. Literally. So change your look too. Your friends will never buy it and secretly think you just broke up with your girlfriend. Make that the beginning of a wonderful new list: “100 secret thoughts generated by a new haircut”.

85. Drive Far Away From Home Until You Get Lost

When you’re sure you’re absolutely lost, get your GPS from the trunk and head back home. Now you know there are worse things out there than running out of ideas for your list. And don’t you dare starting a list about “100 ways to get lost”. Seriously, buddy, nobody wants to know that.

86. Fake A “100 Things” Shopping At The Supermarket

Go to the supermarket, pick 100 different things and put them in your trolley. You don’t have to really buy all 100 items, unless you really want to. This exercise is intended to make you understand you have virtually unlimited options, not to get you broke.

87. Try Guessing Names Of Totally Unknown People

Would that be a “Jane”? Hmm, nope, maybe “Angela”, looks more like an “Angela”. Never try to verify your assumptions, or prepare for this answer: “Get a life! I’m doing an exercise to write a “100 ways to” list?, that’s the worst pick up line I ever heard!”.

88. Clean Up Your Garage

Or, if you don’t have a garage, clean up your room. Or at least the shelves in your office. Shovel those receipts, old files, photos, notes, post-its and wrecked pens. Feels so much better than writing stupid items on a “100 ways to” list, isn’t it? Again, that’s another win-win: if not a huge list, at least a clean house.

89. Send An Email To Some Random Customer Service

Chose whatever business you like and then send an email to their customer service, asking for advice on how to write  a “100 ways to” list post. Most of the answers will be automated, but once you get pass this, you’ll have the time of your life. I’m telling you.

90. Don’t Stop At Number 90

In my experience, number 90 is the most dangerous number to reach when you’re writing such a list. It’s only 10 items away from finish and the mirage of actually getting this done can easily get you off the track. Write something fast at your number 90 and then move on.

91. Walk 100 Steps On A Crowded Street

And I mean count those 100 steps. If you made it without restarting the counting, be assured you’re going to make that list too. Now try it again on a large public square, making a perfect circle, step 100 overlapping step 1. Now you should stop walking in circles and start writing.

92. Send Yourself 100 Emails

Containing the same question: “did you finished item number x?”. After each finished item on your list, delete one of the emails. If you really send yourself 100 emails, I bet you won’t face any difficulty at all in writing your list. It’s hard to send 100 emails to yourself…

93. Name 100 Things You See From Your Window

Another unblocking exercise and a pretty effective one. No need to go up to 100 if you feel you’re pass the block. But it would be a pretty interesting task in any context. It will enlarge your perception and enhance your observation sense.

94. Blend Your Senses

Close your eyes, imagine a fruit and then try to feel its taste. Alternatively, put some music and imagine how each musical instrument will feel in your hand. It’s amazing how effective this is in fostering new ideas or perspectives.

95. Read Motivational/Inspirational Quotes

You have all this wisdom available, floating around, so why don’t just use it? If you don’t have your own quotes repository on file, do a Google search. Reading quotes is like having a sparring partner for your mind.

96. Work It Live

Like not in an offline editor, edit it in your wordpress dashboard and watch the preview every time you add a new item. I find it very motivating to watch the list growing and looking exactly as is going to be.

97. Be Proud Of It

The more you write, the closer you are to finish a great piece of work. Be proud of it. Even if it’s a simple “100 ways to” grow apples in your backyard, it will be useful for somebody. And you’re doing it right now. It’s not the regular blog post you do every day. It’s a huge list.

98. See The Items Like Chapters Of A Bigger Book

Be prepared to detail on all the items on your list. So make it consistent, ready to be developed into something bigger. I did it twice with my previous ones: 100 Ways To Improve Your Life and 100 Ways To Screw Up Your Life. Both lists grew into fully fledged books, available now on Amazon.com.

99. Anticipate The Celebration

The closer you get to the finish, the closer the final gala will be. Anticipate the reward. This time it’s not about the bribe, incentive or motivation. You’re almost done. You’re one tip away. You did it. Step back, take a deep breath and write the last one. And then go out to celebrate.

100. Don’t Give Up

Writing such a huge list is a very important challenge. It cannot be done in only one move, it takes persistence and dedication. But the benefits are huge. And I mean it. So, if you ever planned to start one, don’t stop until you actually publish it. In a few days, or in a few weeks. Just finish it.