Maria Blogs
Thank God for Wordpress!

At some point or another each blogger will be confronted with a nightmare — “writer’s block”.

A range of suggestions have been posted across the blogosphere on what to do when ideas dry up and you just can’t get it on.

So what to do?

Sit back and relax.

Really.

Grab a magazine, sit with your child while s/he watches his daily does of cartoon and pore through a rag mg or a lifestyle spread. Whatever topic takes your fancy.

Ooooh.

No, I’m not going to suggest reinventing magazine articles to get your post on. Though that might not be such a bad idea (thought - do we have to cite source for this?). When reading magazines, how much thought and attention do you put on print ads?

Bingo!

Print ads can be a great source of things to write about. So you see a dozen hair-dye ads in a 50-page magazine. Don’t just pick out that Clairol Ad and write a 400 word post on it. Isstead, create a post covering those 12 hair-dyes you saw and think - what’s the difference between these products? why twelve varying ads in just one mag? (I exaggerate about the amount but you get my drift yeah?)

If you want to be scientific and/or historical, you can check up on the evolution of hair-dyes and write about what they put in those tiny vials these days (some claim to be drip-free, all natural dye, etc etc). Or you can just vent on how superficial and vain we can be.

Then there are those sexy jeans ads. We have come a long way from “mommy jeans” and “hot pants” which seems to be available only in size -0.

Nowadays, there’s a pair of jeans for every shape and size imaginable. You can even find a pair of “skinny jeans” to fit a size 42 (personally, I don’t think one should go there).

So next time you run out of ideas to write about, grab a magazine or a newspaper and start browsing through ads.

Happy writing!

Read: When Ideas Dry Up »

Blogging may be hitting its peak and I’m sure that over the next few years, the number of serious bloggers will see a decline but there will still be new faces adding to this industr. A new trend is emerging, one that I even thought of starting myself a year back - blog networks.

Last week, I came across an ad for paid blogging at Today.com. Basically, you get to set up your own subdomain like ‘blogname[dot]today[dot]com’ and start blogging. You get paid a dollar a post plus $0.002 or something per CPM.

Hokey. Before you jump in head first and get disillusioned if money doesn’t start pouring in as fast as you want, there are the not-so fine print to these things.

First, this is nice for new to blogging, or those who are just experimenting with how to earn from their blogs. From what I read on the FAQ, only the first month’s worth of blog posts is guaranteed a $1 a post payout, and only the first post of the day is paid. Just like in any other blog network, you’re restricted in how you control your blog’s appearance (they actually place adsense on your sidebar!)

Still, that’s $30 at the end of the month to start with with little or no overhead. Afterwhich, you’ll have to make sure you get enough traffic (promote your blog!) and have quality posts (they review posts) to increase your long term payout.

Get paid to BLOG at Today.com.

Read: Blog Network Promises To Pay You To Blog »

I am still trying to deal with my theme and I may have taken on more than I care to do. Bleh. But this girl’s not giving up!

Meanwhile, I have been experimenting with new ad placements on my blog to test if these things really work. Just let me know if you spot them and they annoy you =)

Read: New Ad Placement Experiment »