The Honest Way

I thought that being the end of another month would be a good time to post a quick update on my JV with Monika Mundell of The Writers Manifesto fame and our already thriving social networking site Blogging Web 2.0.

We’ve both been busy posting a huge amount of content to the blog and have already attracted a few sign-ups and made some money (ok, a few dollars but it all counts) from advertising and affiliate links. We’ve had some visits from one or two high profile bloggers who have poked their heads round the door to see what we’re up to. I’m sure they’ll be back soon to see how we’re progressing - very well thanks!

The main reason for this post is to hopefully tempts some of you to call in over there and write a guest post for us. You’ll get a valuable one-way inbound link back to your site and plenty of extra exposure.

My last post (today) has already pulled in 478 viewers - no mean feat for a blog not yet a month old!

So you can see we’re promoting it hard and the viewers are coming to see what the fuss is all about - they’re liking what they’re seeing and coming back for more. So if you want a piece of that pie, click on over there (after you’ve finished reading this blog, of course!) and write a guest post for us.

Terry Didcott
THE HONEST WAY

          

There are often some great competitions that bloggers run across from time to time and I just found one that got my interest.

The mysterious John Cow has managed to appropriate three rather desirable items to give away as prizes from top people Seth Godin, Aaron Wall and Yaro Starak over at his blog. Any one of them is soooo worth picking up, but you’ll have to get over there and see what they are for yourself.
To enter, you can either leave a comment to his post, subscribe to his RSS feed, comment and add a mention of his contest on someone else’s blog (that might not go down too well…) or do what I’m doing and blog about his contest!

That’s assuming John Cow is in fact a he, or is only one person!

So if you like competitions and would like to be in with a chance of picking up a very worthwhile prize for doing what you do anyway, get over to his (her/their) site and have a go for yourself!

Terry Didcott
THE HONEST WAY

          

Blogging is all about writing for enjoyment and for profit (if that is part of your reason) as well as increasing your online presence by creating the perfect foil for promoting your area of expertise.

Here at The Honest Way blog my area of expertise is quite broad, encompassing blogging in general, writing and publication, making money online via internet marketing and affiliate marketing, social networking and even some website design thrown in for good measure!

These subjects together give me a wide variety of topics to write about, so there is really never a dull moment in this blog. So what exactly is the subject of this post?

Well, sometimes you just can’t fit something into an exact pigeon hole, so this is broadly about writing, but also about using the skills and creativity that a good writer should possess in order to create an entertaining and informative article that the readers of this blog will enjoy and feel that they have gained something from their visit. Even if it’s merely an insight into the inner workings of Terry Didcott brain - now that might be a real can of worms!

When you’re writing for your own blog, always keep in mind what your reader might expect to get out of it - put yourself in your reader’s shoes and see your post from their point of view. If you can see that it has entertained, enlightened, educated, enthralled or mix and match any one of those four, then it should be good enough to publish!

Certainly good enough to read!

Terry Didcott
THE HONEST WAY

          

Ok, I’m never satisfied with what I’ve got. So I like to tinker with things in the never ending quest to make things that little bit better.

In the case of this blog, I was getting a little tired of the look - so rather than go for a complete new template, which would work out to be a lot of work putting all the bits and pieces that have grown into this blog back into some semblance of order, I decided it would be better to just fiddle with the CSS a little and make it a bit more unique.

Why?

Well, when I first got this template, I had no idea there were so many to choose from, so I sort of just grabbed the first one I saw that looked like it would be similar to the layout of the main site. Well, it was a little different, but the sizes were the same, so the header fitted in fine and the sidebar is quite adequate for what I want to be doing with it.

So all I’ve done really is give the main post area a white background and touched up the sidebar a bit - and voila! Without much work at all, my template is a little different from everyone else’s!

I like individuality, don’t you?

Terry Didcott
THE HONEST WAY