How to Suck at Writing, and then Write for the Biggest Blogs in the World - DailyBlogTips

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How to Suck at Writing, and then Write for the Biggest Blogs in the World Posted: 31 Aug 2010 09:15 PM PDT This is a guest post by Danny Wong. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here. Writing hasn't always been a skill of mine. I rarely ever read when I was younger, and still had my father read me books for years after I had learned how to read for myself. So how did I go from a forced writer (I only wrote things when I had to for school and never for recreation) to an influential blogger? I started writing for our business blog just because we needed content creators. I was new to this whole Social Media thing, and I could hardly write coherent content, nevertheless quality content. I dreaded it. We quickly killed my future contributions to the blog because I wasn't enjoying it, the content wasn't incredibly beneficial or engaging, and instead I focused more efforts on things I could do to really impact the business. So I turned to learning how to manage Public Relations because I thought, "If I can't inbound any visitors to the site and business blog by writing quality content, then let me go out and get traffic from other people's sites and blogs." So I spent a lot of time schmoozing bloggers and writers and then I closed a feature article with a writer on a site called Examiner.com. I thought it was the neatest thing to have such a high traffic site featuring me since it had millions of unique visitors a month. After reading and reveling in the feature article, I saw a Call-To-Action saying, "Write for us" and I thought, "Hm. This seems like an interesting opportunity to build brand awareness through links in my byline and increase my personal brand by just being a (sort of) professional writer." The CTA called to me and I answered. Using a referral from the writer that featured me, I ended up becoming the Boston Startup Examiner, and then things just snowballed from there. I starting reading blogs like DailyBlogTips, reading more content on Examiner and other news-oriented blogs, and then starting doing guest posts any blogs that would take my work! Then I just kept stumbling upon opportunities, and quickly built relationships with lots of editors through my formal PR work and then reached out to them with a guest post ready for their review. Finally, I started publishing on some of the biggest sites in their niche, like SearchEngineJournal and a local NY Times blog, and then I started publishing on some of the biggest blogs in the world like TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb. Now, I have a blogger account with the world's #1 blog, HuffingtonPost, and I have a pretty strong portfolio of writings published in an even stronger set of blogs, which gives me leverage when trying to publish articles on other sites when I can say, "My name is Danny Wong and I have contributed writings to NY Times (blog), HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb and Examiner." Just to break down how I went from sucking at writing to writing for some of the world's biggest blogs: 1. I had a relationship with a writer at a media outlet that had open invitations for writers to join, and spent way too many hours crafting my application writings as well as my first few posts. 2. I was reading more blogs and books, and spent more time writing blog posts that I would never publish just for the sake of practicing writing. 3. I started publishing anywhere and everywhere that would talk to a small-time writer like me, especially one that had some interesting thoughts and experience in startups and entrepreneurship. 4. Some of the bigger blogs I read had published guest posts on their site, so I contacted the first person I knew who was a writer (a relationship I built through my PR work) and asked how I might become a contributor. Sometimes, I was directed to the editor who would then request I submit a post to them directly, or I would have already had contact with an editor who was anxious to see how I could contribute to their business. 5. The bigger sites bit. Admittedly, I did spend several hours writing my first post for each outlet, but it was well worth the time investment because I started the relationship off on the right foot, and then became a semi-frequent contributor. 6. I name-dropped all the different media outlets I had contributed to when pitching myself to publish with a new media outlet, so things just snowballed as I built up my credibility. As I became more credible after publishing posts with more and more influential blogs, the bigger blogs started to pay attention to me and were more than happy to take my contributions. It took quite a bit of hard work, networking and determination to build up my writing skills and my writing portfolio so now I can proudly say I am a blogger with the #1 blog in the world and write for several of the biggest blogs out there. What tactics did you use to publish with big blogs and sites? About the author: Danny Wong is a writer at HuffingtonPost (you can see his column here), the #1 blog in the world, and the co-founder of co-created dress shirts startup, Blank Label. Original Post: How to Suck at Writing, and then Write for the Biggest Blogs in the World

30 Tools to Help You Find Domain Names Posted: 31 Aug 2010 07:05 AM PDT As you probably know recently I launched a new website, which aims to be a complete resource for people who want to get started online and build their first websites. Traffic is picking up there, and one of the most common complaints I get over the contact form is that readers can’t find available domains that are appealing enough. That is why I decided to compile a list there with 30 Awesome Tools To Find Available Domain Names. I tried to make it as complete as possible, and you’ll find different types of tools included. Some allow you to search for available domains in real time, others create and suggest domains for you, others yet allow you to add prefixes, suffixes and adjectives to your specified keywords. There are also resources to find recently expired domain names, lists of available domains with a specific number of characters and so on. I don’t think I missed any tool, but if you know one that is not included there just let me know and I’ll add it. Make sure to bookmark that article too, as it will be useful when you decide to research new domain names. Original Post: 30 Tools to Help You Find Domain Names

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