Pick one tiny fiddly job that “only takes a moment!” and automate it. Suggestions:
- Set up a filter on your email inbox to sort receipts into the receipts folder automatically.
- Set up your Google Analytics to email you a report weekly or monthly. (Which you automatically sort into the right folder, of course.)
- If you publish to a regular rhythm, write and schedule posts in advance.
- Create a reminder task in your calendar for the right time to complete the task.
- Set up automatic banking for your bills, regular payments etc.
- Schedule your computer backups, disk cleanup and defragmentation.
- Set up automatic backups on your website and database.
What did you automate? Tell us in the comments!
Visit a blog that has some commonalities to yours and a contributor who probably knows who you are… because you’ve chatted in comments, talked on Twitter, met at a networking event, have friends in common or hang out at the same forum. Get their email address and send them an email. It should include:
- A really obvious subject line: Offering to guest post on [YourAwesomeBlog]
- A paragraph that shows that you understand the author and their readers
- Some suggestions on topics that you could cover, word count, etc
- A specific time when this article would be ready by (and Lordy Lordy you better be able to deliver on it!)
- The benefit this article would have for your readers
- Thank them for their time and attention
Then review the entire email until you’re confident that:
- You don’t sound desperate
- Or that you’ll hunt them down if they say no
- You don’t sound like you’re doing them the world’s biggest favour
- Your language is good (spell-check, people!)
- You sound like you’re talking to a real person
- It’s clearly a win-win idea
So, who will you be asking to guest post for? (If it’s us, we’d love to have you…) Tell us in the comments!
The lovely Irina Jordan just asked me on Twitter: How do you come up with ideas for your 5 minute blog: working with clients; smth you came across, etc.? Thx.
Great question! Hard question. Now I have to actually figure out where my ideas come from!
A few main sources:
1. Stuff I wish I knew five years ago when starting my first website.
2. Talking to people on forums and Twitter, especially when they talk about what they’re stuck on.
3. Our lovely commenters have suggested ideas.
4. And they’ve emailed us with ideas too.
5. Sometimes I have a theme: Twitter, usability, copywriting, and I write a few missions in the theme.
6. Whatever I need to do and haven’t done yet.
7. Something mentioned by my coaching clients.
8. When I’ve seen it done badly on another website.
9. Or really well.
10. I stare and stare at a blank patch of wall until inspiration strikes. Or I wander off and drink some Diet Coke.
Where do your ideas come from? Tell us in the comments!
Go to some of your earliest work, pages and posts you were proud of. Pretend that you’ve never seen them before and don’t know who wrote them, and just read them for enjoyment. Laugh at the jokes! Nod thoughfully at the insights. Read the comments. And the instant you find yourself thinking, “That’s great advice, I wish I’d known that when I was starting out” or “Yes! I should do that more”, remember that you wrote this. This funny, wise, practical, entertaining, well-researched, highly-commented article was written by you. You do great work! You made someone laugh until coffee came out through their nose. You helped that woman reach a better understanding with her son. This matters, this is working, and all you need to do is keep it up.
I wrote this article this morning because I need a boost.
- I helped some friends move house yesterday and so today I feel lightly bruised all over.
- We’re now in what Seth Godin calls The Dip. The initial excitement of starting a business has worn off, and we’re in the hard slog period where lots of websites fail. I’m confident this business can be a success, and we’re certainly not howling alone in the desert (thank you, commenters and subscribers!), but this has stopped being a fun hobby and has started being fun work.
I know some of you are in the same place. If you’ve assessed your website and found it’s not a viable business, well, it’s probably time to consider if this is a good use of your time and talents. But if the numbers add up and you can really make a go of this, and you still look at today’s to-do list and groan, take your five minutes to see how far you’ve come.
Has this helped you out, or given you house-moving stories to tell? Tell us in the comments!
Is your website easy to read? Go to the Juicy Studio Readability Test and enter your website address. It’ll do some math (the average number of syllables in a word, and words in a sentence) and give you a few measures, including the average level of education required to understand the content.
The lower the number the better. There are lots of experts who think that a rating that says an eight-grader could understand their content is… embarassing. I’m writing big important articles about advanced topics, I don’t want a primary schooler to be able to read it! they say. And they are wrong.
There are three big reasons you want your website to be as easy to read as possible:
1. To be accessible to a wider audience: this includes visitors with a lower reading level or with English as a second language.
2. To avoid the Curse of Knowledge (Learn more in Remember when you used to suck?)
3. To attract the visitors you most want to reach. People don’t read on the internet, they tend to skim; like they’re going through a magazine. If you use language that isn’t strong and simple, you’ll lose your visitors’ attention.
Our website is readable by most 5th graders. I’m damn proud of that number: we write about technology! I am in love with fancy words! I tend to ramble! I don’t allow myself those indulgences when writing here, because we want to make complicated and intimidating subjects simpler. And simple language is a good way to do that.
What’s your website’s score? Tell us in the comments!
Nearly one in twenty people have some form of colour blindness. To see what your website looks like to them, go to the Vischeck webpage checker and enter your website’s address. You can display your website for two kinds of red/green impairment and also blue/yellow.
While you’re there, I recommend you look at the examples. Someone [...]
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Our first guest post!
Email is such an important part of our daily work lives that we might not even notice how much of our valuable time it actually eats up. In today’s article, you’ll learn how to squeeze much of the waste from your email management habits. By the time we’re done you’ll be able [...]
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We’ve all got tasks that we put off. They’re so embarrassing (or boring or smelly or frustrating or icky or scary or money-related) that we cringe just thinking about them. They’re always pushed to the absolute bottom of the to-do list. So on top of the dread of the task, we end up with a [...]
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