Thoughts and Ideas for Today's Entrepreneur

[jasaunders]

I have recently started a blog to discuss my thoughts, ideas and insights into entrepreneurship, small business, start-ups, web and technology, networking, book reviews, and much more.

http://www.joshuasaunders.net/blog

I have a whole list of topics that I plan on covering, including advice on finding capital, tips and tricks for surviving your start-up phase, case studies on successful internet start-ups, interviews with internet companies that are making a difference in the world, finding employees and contractors to work for less than market pay, business book reviews and much, much more. If you have any topics you would like to read about, please let me know and I will try to address it. If you think you fit in as an expert in any of the topics I have listed, feel free to contact me.

[akula]

Josh, some feedback

1. if you continue doing what you're doing, you will get tired of your blog and will shut it down within 2-6 months

2. to solve this problem you'll need to do five important things

a) pick an idol. whose blog do you want to overcome in popularity?
b) pick a very specific audience and a specific topic area
c) never write posts more than 100 words long
d) have distinctive and consistent structure to your posts
e) MOST IMPORTANT: always link to at least 2 other bloggers in every post, and send them emails telling them that you've linked to them

a blog is not your platform to discuss your "thoughts, ideas and insights into entrepreneurship". it's a networking tool that you should use to comment on discussions started by other bloggers.

find interesting discussions on other blogs. do a short post about it. send an email. and bang! - you've just gotten value out of your blogging experience; you have a contact, and they'll often also link back to your post on their site (i.e. traffic).

follow these 5 steps, and you will enjoy a rewarding, successful blog

yes, I will answer questions on why these 5 points (and other points) matter

[jasaunders]

Thank you for your suggestions.

To comment on your comments, the purpose of my blog is to discuss my thoughts, ideas, and insights into the entrepreneurial world. My goal is not to comment on what other bloggers are already discussing. I will be talking about ideas that interest me and that I feel will be intriguing to many others as well. Nor am I trying to have a very popular blog and use it for networking. My sole purpose is to discuss things that interest me and some of my readers and have discussions about those topics.

The first few posts are just quick entries... as I obtain more readers and morei nteraction I will be taking more time in writing higher quality posts.

[akula]

sure, blogging is a very interesting phenomena

2 years ago I started Australia's first blogging company

Back then very few people knew about wordpress

That changed, and it put me out of business

A part of the way I tried to differentiate the software is by offering a database of advice for bloggers on how to overcome blog mortality and get the most results out of their blogging experience

I still, obviously, have hundreds of those articles written by all sorts of industry pros like Debbie Weil, Yaro Starak and so on...

Do you know what blog mortality is? It's what happens when bloggers limit them selves to writing introspective essays (similar to your style). Blog mortality is a serious problem - it happens to 95% of blogs, including our very own YE blog

After about 10-20 posts, the writer runs out of ideas and falls to feeling like they're only talking to them selves, because the posts are too long for anybody to comment on, they're not timely, and there is no traffic for anyone to read them

to solve this problem of blog mortality, numerous high profile bloggers have written ooodles of advice on how to have a good blog. I've distilled their advice in the points above.

Want to have a successful blog? Take some advice from the experts :-)

Don't write introspective essays. You will wear your self out. Comment on current affairs in a particular field (i.e. http://paul.kedrosky.com/) or write unique, researched content (i.e. http://www.startup-review.com/)

[cube3]

i agree with akula's blog advice through and through

[Newton]

I don't, 100 words as a limit is way too short. To be a successful blogger you need to provide good quality content. Content is the #1 priority and you simply cannot provide that within 100 words.

www.copyblogger.net - Brian Clark writes a blog about.. writing for blogs which is helpful for anyone trying to write a blog.

I agree with the other points but not completely with number (e) - Every single post is excessive and such a metronomic writing style will be a turn-off.

[DeonKrey]

Picking an idol is one good point because as you get to know these online gurus, you also get to adapt their strategies, concepts and even the way they approach the audience that'll really add up to your old blogging performances although it's still bigger when you've got unique ideas in mind that'll soon help you get ahead of them someday.