5 Ways To Beat Writer’s Block

It’s Monday already? Whoa! That means it’s time for another episode of Digital Nomad Radio. This week’s episode is all about beating writer’s block. A fellow blogger sent me an email asking how I managed to come up with new ideas to write about everyday and I thought I would answer her questions and share them with everyone.

Teaser:

Here’s a sneak peek of the 5 tips to beat writer’s block:

• Write Down Your Post Ideas – It’s simple. Right down your post ideas!
• Use Other Blogs As Inspiration – Check out other blogs for some good ideas and topics to cover in your own posts.
• Read Websites Like Yahoo, CNN, Etc. – Use websites like Yahoo as a place to find articles. Then spin them in your own words and add to them.
• Look Back At Your Old Posts For Ideas – You have an archives page right? When’s the last time you took a look at it for some blog post ideas?
• When You’re In A Writing Mood…Keep Going! – So you’re in the zone and writing like a mad man. Don’t stop after one post!

Click the read more button below or the post title above to listen to the episode.

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Map Out Blog Posts With Google Maps

A few days ago, I was looking something up on Google maps and found the ability to create custom maps. I had heard of the option before, but never took the time to screw around with it. After playing around with it, I managed to find a real cool thing you can do with it for your blog. Check it out!

View Blog Posts Based On Location

View Larger Map
Basically, you can click on any destination and it will show some of the posts I have placed in the menu.

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How To Double Your Traffic

In Half The Time

In a post last week, a reader asked if I would do a post comparing my traffic stats to a few months ago and talk about what I have done. So I thought I would take a look back and compare my blog a few months ago to the current one and share some insight on how to increase traffic free.

The easiest way for me to do this, is to pick a date a few months back and talk about before and after. So lets start with the before stats.

The Beginning Through July 11th, 2008

As of July 11th, 2008 my blog had been up for almost 6 months. This domain was purchased in February and went live in the beginning of the month. As far as stats go, here is the results my first 5 (and a half) months of consistent blogging:

• 51,361 Visits
• 19,235 Unique Visitors
• 64,649 Pageviews
• Alexa Rank: 200,000 – 300,000

If you visited my site on July 11th, this is what you would have seen:

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Custom Post Excerpts in Wordpress

A reader contacted me this weekend and asked how I got my excerpts on the homepage to look the way they do. So I thought I would share my secret with everyone.

If you have chosen to go with a blog homepage that contains excerpts instead of full posts, this tip will help make them look a lot better .

What’s So Bad About The Default Excerpts?

By default, Wordpress takes the first 100 characters of your post and uses them as the post excerpt. As far as length, this might be fine depending on how long your posts are. The problem, is with the formatting. Take a look at this excerpt:

Default Excerpts

Notice how all of the formatting has disappeared within the post? It simply takes all the words and places them together. This is a problem if you use a lot of formatting, such as H2 subtitles.

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