PPP Gets Performancing

I’m a great fan of Performancing and use their blog editor for Firefox almost daily. That is a great tool and I’m always on the lookout for more from them. It’s a brand I tend to trust – I also use Performancing Metrics to track hits to my site and although it hasn’t worked well on all my sites, when it does, the data has been interesting. Metrics is very easy to use, especially if you blog with WordPress, as you can embed the tracking code without having to alter the templates. You can even track your metrics on your blog with a sidebar widget, if you like that sort of thing.

That’s why I was intrigued to hear that blog advertising company Pay Per Post has acquired some parts of Performancing. This is not the PFF blog editor or the Partners network, but according to Performancing it does include Metrics, which will get some much needed development.

Great Articles I’ve Never Written

Over the course of the Christmas holiday, I have had some unaccustomed free time. While I was lying awake one night, I amused myself by thinking of article titles that would get attention but which I hadn’t yet written. Things like:

How To Keep The Chucky Out Of Your Child At Christmas

I don’t know about anyone else’s children, but the combination of overexcitement and overindulgence turns mine into a mercurial gremlin (and yes, I know what I’m saying).

If you can think of any tips for avoiding the Chucky phenomenon I’d love to hear them – and I might get around to writing that article one day. In the meantime I might add to this series as I think of things, so watch this space.

There’ve Been Some Changes …

… which I’m sure you can see for yourselves. I’ve changed the theme, added a few plugins (more on that another time) and am trying to take the management of this site to a new level. I’ll let you know how that goes.

My feeling is that a blog is made to be updated, so it’s a good place to keep my site up to date, rather than relying on static pages. And thanks to the wonders of WordPress, I can have static pages as well – a win-win situation.

There will be a few more changes over the next few weeks, including (I hope) moving my newsletter management to this site. Watch this space.

Hubba Hubba

I’ve found a new place to use some of my old blog posts. It’s called HubPages. It works a bit like Squidoo. A hub is like a lens – a collection of information on any subject. I’ve written on writing and promotion (what else) and now have five hubs to my name.

What I like about it is that  I get feedback from the readers and there’s a nifty little block on the right which shows where all your traffic is coming from, so you can see a direct link between where you promote and what the result is. I’ve learned some things about that which I’ll share with you another time.

My Blogging Year

It’s been just over a year since I started my first blog here. As soon as I’d done that, I started another blog on WritingUp. There, I met friends and kindred spirits, many of whom I’m still in touch with today. I also met a supportive community of fellow writers, and I tried to give something back in return. Here’s what I’ve done in a year on WritingUp.

Feverish Writing

As a freelance writer, I sometimes find myself writing about things I know very little about. In the last week, I have written about diet pills, rubber mats, commercial insurance, mortgages and designer handbags. That last one was fun. Today my task is to write about Fioricet. It’s a fever medication though probably not like the ones I use for my daughter. We once ran out of ibuprofen and had to take the children’s version – we needed three before the fever abated.

Time For A Break

Some days I get really tired of sitting in front of the computer. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job. Freelance writing is the best thing I could be doing, but it’s not always easy to keep dipping from the well of creativity. Every now and then it runs dry and I feel drained. There are lots of ways to handle this.

Sometimes I get up and walk around, go out on the balcony and look at the golf course and the sea (the view from my house is great). Sometimes I even go outside – and then there are the times when I go for a metabolism booster – something that will give me the get up and go I need to finish my current writing task.

Right now, I’ve got eight blog posts to write and then I think it’s time for a break.