Happy Friday (and National Book Lovers Day) everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another weekly round-up post from our growing community of bloggers, writers, vloggers, podcasters, and other fellow creatives. To be straight to the point, each and every week we hand-pick five top posts from a pool of the highest voted user-submitted/created posts in the community and include them in this weekly round-up blog post, along with the newsletter for all of our e-mail subscribers. As per our submission rules, posts shared can not be re-posts, or older than 1 month (31 days), meaning that all of the following are fresh and recent! Tune in every week and you will gradually become a better and more insightful creative over time!

Douglas Preston from the L.A. Times captures our top spot this week with his investigative look into how writers are earning significantly less compared to just a decade ago because of various scams such as counterfeiting, doppelganging, title and sub-title cloning, piracy, plagiarism, among others. Little is being done about it at the moment, but it’s great to see this appear in a popular and nationally read newspaper, helping it garner it some well deserved attention.

In a close second, Darius Foroux lays out an incredibly simple but effective 4 step plan on how to form new habits that ultimately reflect your progress in life, and your creative journey. The pattern almost each and every time: Start small and work your way up.

Topping off the podium is Ann Marie Nieves from the Writer Unboxed blog, who focuses her post on small victories and how to embrace them, which coincidently is a bit of a continuation from Darius’ post just above. Great minds think alike! 😉

In our fourth spot Tim Denning, a popular Medium writer, self-reflects on the lessons he learned the hard (but common) way–by failing. Creating and launching a paid course is a growing and effective tactic in monetizing a blog or website, but as the space gets more congested, it will only get harder for those who dare step into the arena.

Last but not least, we arrive at The Art of Blogging, with Christian Mihai’s simple but effective list of things you can do to improve your blog and attract more readers. Some of these will take a significant amount of work, but that’s just how it works and sadly there’s no getting around it.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: Aug 3 – Aug 9, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and International Beer Day) everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another weekly round-up post from our growing community of bloggers, writers, vloggers, podcasters, and other fellow creatives. To be straight to the point, each and every week we hand-pick five top posts from a pool of the highest voted user-submitted/created posts in the community and include them in this weekly round-up blog post, along with the newsletter for all of our e-mail subscribers. As per our submission rules, posts shared can not be re-posts, or older than 1 month (31 days), meaning that all of the following are fresh and recent! Tune in every week and you will gradually become a better and more insightful creative over time!

This week’s top spot belongs to Cali Bird from The Gentle Creative with her enthralling advice on how we as creatives can attentively balance our ambitions with the important people in our lives. Relationships are extremely important to maintain for keeping a strong mental health.

Next up, just below at #2 is Sara Fischer from Axios who details out some recent news about Youtube and their continuing struggles dealing with creator backlash, and ever growing competition from other video platforms.

Nathan Barry, notable CEO of ConvertKit, lands on our 3rd spot this week with his piece about developing good habits, and sticking with them thick and thin. Listing his own experiences, he explains how it’s always tough to start something new, getting easier along the way once the routine starts becoming more normalized.

Up next is a guide written by Stephanie Diamond with illustrations by Carlos Sanchez about “changing where you live and work in order to nourish your creative lifestyle” as accurately put in their own words. It’s a lengthy one at 2700+ words, but a good one!

Wrapping up our list is Nate Hoffelder with his insightful look into landing pages for your blog or website, how to utilize them as effectively as possible, and the best practices for whatever you inevitably may want to use them for.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: July 27 – Aug 2, 2019 →

Happy Friday (and National All or Nothing Day) everyone!

Preface: Welcome to another weekly round-up post from our growing community of bloggers, writers, vloggers, podcasters, and other fellow creatives. To be straight to the point, each and every week we hand-pick five top posts from a pool of the highest voted user-submitted/created posts in the community and include them in this weekly round-up blog post, along with the newsletter for all of our e-mail subscribers. As per our submission rules, posts shared can not be re-posts, or older than 1 month (31 days), meaning that all of the following are fresh and recent! Tune in every week and you will gradually become a better and more insightful creative over time!

This week brings us an incredibly insightful piece by blogging pro Tom Kuegler who posts on Medium (you might need to use incognito mode if not a member) about how personal life experiences are an absolute must to bring blog posts to life, landing him the top spot in this week’s edition. It’s all about having knowledge and experiences that no one else has, and being different!

Up next is a post from early July, where our very own B.E. author Jakub explains how the ever so lengthy creative journey is a different experience for each and every one in almost every aspect, and how the concept of compound growth accelerates the speed of getting through it significantly. He uses a neat hypothetical vehicle concept to help get his points across.

Rounding off the top 3 is Christina Gleason on her relatively short but useful post about the proper use of copyrighted images, how not to just “steal” them from places like Google Image search, and how to legally and ethically use royalty-free image sources for the visual aspects of your creative endeavours.

Number 4 brings us Darren Rowse from the iconic ProBlogger blog who details out everything you need to know about evergreen content, which is generally content that doesn’t age and stays fresh, but most importantly shareable for an extended period of time.

Finally, in the fifth and final spot is a gloomy but striking piece by Michale Stelzner about how Google is making its products more convenient and easier to use, but at the huge cost of the creatives who produce the content that Google inevitably displays. About half of users who make a search never leave a Google results page because they get what they want right there and now — it’s a problem that will only get bigger as Google and its technology gets smarter.

Continue reading This Week in Blogging, Writing, and Content Creation: July 20 – July 26, 2019 →