How many times have you been at work just mingling with your fellow co-workers in the break room for a cup of coffee or joe as some like to call it

Do you have any idea how valuable your time is? If you spend on average 15 minutes per day in the break room you basically have wasted 91.25 hours of your life with meaningless chit-chat that could be avoided by simply not going in the break room.

What would happen to your blogging if you took your break room time and simply used to to write a blog-post? Connect with like-minded people on twitter and facebook or actually did your job during that time?

You would be much more productive and you essentially will be making money! Don’t get lost on the fast track of the break room like your piers! Stand out and stand up! BLOG AWAY!

Today is a very exciting day for me, I have finally reached the 1,000 rss readers mark and I am so happy to share this moment with all of you my loyal readers!

I thought since I have been somewhat successful and reached this goal I would share what I have done to achieve this and how you can duplicate my success on your own blogs! Without further adieu lets get started my blogging peeps!

Newsletter List – This is probably the one single thing that has helped the most, basically I use Aweber which I highly recommended since its the best newsletter mailing system available. Be sure to signup and if you need any help signing up or getting it working on your site just send me over an email

A Great Blog Design – This one is a little tricky, you can hire someone to build you one or you can take an already elite theme and just tweak it to your likes, make it unique and keep your personal touch on everything. Remember this is your blog and people need to see you in every aspect of it including how you present your blog to your readers!

Video Blogging – Although my videos are not the greatest or the funniest content out there they do help drive traffic to my blog. I have noticed the visitors coming from YouTube are more willing to signup to my newsletter (little tip for you all).

Write kick butt content others talk about – I have written a ton of posts on this blog but the best ones of been mentioned on other blogs around the blogosphere and those posts drove traffic which was converted into subscribers! Word of mouth is a powerful tool guys, use it!

Keep your blog up – I use hostgator to host almost all of my websites and for the simple fact that they are the best I have never been down in over 2 years time of my sites being hosted on there servers.

With all of those tips it really just comes down to time and commitment from you to continue posting and moving forward even when you don’t see growth. Remember blogging takes time so just sit back, blog and enjoy your journey, thats what its all about anyways! Have fun!

Now I am sure you all know that I am one for originality and stealing content is never a good idea anyways because of duplicate content issues, however who ever said you couldn’t use someones idea an make it better? No one!

So here is what I am proposing…. I don’t see a problem with you going to other bloggers in your niche (whatever it may be) and going through there archives. Find some topics at least 6+ months old and simply grab post ideas from them.

Write an even more detailed post then they did, make it longer and make yours better then they did. You can’t get accused of using someones idea and making it better (otherwise there would be only 1 manufacture for every product out there).

I highly suggest not copying any exact words and avoid re-writing the same concept but the overall idea can be expanded upon.

I hope this new post idea helps you (and yes you can steal my idea for this post if you want).

I know I have not been posting much and I apologize, I have been really busy! However today I wanted to talk a little bit about life. Blogging is great but not enough people are talking about life on the net.

This post is sort of inspirational / motivational so I hope you like it.

Good news is that I am back with my girlfriend, you remember the one I was totally in love with and then was a jerk to and am now back with because she is understanding? Yeah that one

Well through that whole process of getting back with her something struck me, when I was dating her before I never simply stopped and made a memory, remembering the smells, the touches, the perfect smile etc…

Since starting to date again I have begun doing this, I just close my eyes and make a memory of the senses. Then I write down what we did on a quick note in my iPhone. After a year or so I plan to take all these notes and read through them with her and we can remember the amazing times we have had.

I want to encourage you all to get away from the computer, just go out and make a memory whether that’s with a loved one or a great friend! Just do it and take those pictures and make notes! You only live this life one time but its so worth living if your attitude is right and you remember it all!

Enjoy it guys, its worth the journey!

With that said one main principal is that bloggers like to tweak things, we like to see how something may work better if we do this or that and that’s the topic of today’s post. Today I want to discuss 5 main areas of your blog that you may not have thought about tweaking to help improve click-throughs and signups to your newsletter. Lets get started sha’ll we? Right after a video…

Sooooooo…

Newsletter Opt-in List / Pop Hover Box – This is one of my favorite things to tweak for better results, since tweaking mine I have gained extra newsletter signups and some more business in general to my blog. Its nice to know aweber has my back!

Blog Design / Layout – One of the most profitable things you can tweak is your design and layout, mainly the placement of ads. But also your content to make it more seen! It really is sad that not many bloggers tweak this like they could.

So question of the day, what do you tweak on your blog and why! Post your creative comments and ideas below!

I’m not saying Goals are wrong in fact I have written multiple posts on the subject and how valuable they are, but this post is kind of a rant because i’m getting tired of these newb bloggers who don’t really blog just to blog.

What I mean by the question of this post is simple, what makes someone a real blogger, is it success, making money, having subscribers? What is it?

None of the above, what makes a real blogger is the pure fact that someone will write and putup kick butt content just because whether they make a dime or not. I will admit when I first started my blogging career I was into the hype to. However a year and a half later after making money having lots of subscribers and such blogging is really just something I want to do and I am currently doing it without pay simply because I love it that much.

Its one way to de-stress but it also allows me to post and write when I feel like it, not when I have people breathing down my neck for more content constantly.

I run more then just this blog to and I look at them all the same, if they make me money AWESOME but if they don’t I will continue to post when I feel like it.

That’s all I wanted to say today but I will be posting a real content post soon so stay tuned guys oh and BTW COMMENTS make me want to post more just an FYI!

That question actually sparked this post, because although that one plugin does a fantastic job it takes more then 1 to tango! Today I will be listing some basic spam prevention techniques for comment spam!

The Plugins

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam This is the plugin that puts the nice Captcha code on my comment section that MUST be filled out in order for a comment to get into my system. It works great and has eliminated about 90% of spam comments that I was getting! I highly recommend it! You can download the SI Captcha Anti-Spam plugin free of use!

Good Ol Akismet This is the old standard for WordPress blogs but it works wonders, already blocked over 4,000 spam comments for me! You can read all about it and get install instructions from this website.

AVH First Defense Against Spam Plugin This was an extra little plugin I installed just because it has proven to work for me and some friends since it came out. This plugin basically checks ips of spammers from the past and blocks them from commenting all on the fly. Worth installing! Checkout the download site and install it right away!

As with almost all the wordpress plugins out there, you can now install plugins on the fly from your wordpress admin panel. Read this post here that I wrote for a basic overview on doing that! Its under the “New Comment Protection (& Cleaned up Spam)” section of that post.

I will end this post with a video!

I hope you enjoyed learning how to prevent spam from getting onto your blog. Return the favor by signing up to my newsletter and be sure to tell your friends as well!

These spam comments can reach into the thousands and its time consuming to go through them all and delete by hand.

So today I am going to show you one quick simple method to delete all the comments currently in your pending section of wordpress comments!

Before I did this my database was upwards of 100mb which is very hard to keep track of if I ever need to move servers or anything like that. A large % of that mb was because of all these spam comments I had waiting in the moderation que.

Its vital for me to get rid of these so my database will work quicker, backup easier and overall be more efficient!

Step by step how to do it!

1. Open up your cpanel.

2. Open up MYSQL section.

3. Open PHPMyAdmin

3. Find your database and back it up. Here is a video tutorial on how to backup your database through PHPMYADMIN.  I will assume you can figure it out by following this tutorial but if you can’t just comment below or email me for further help and directions.

Video Tutorial – Backing Up Your Database

4. Now that your database is backed up, return to the main PHPMyAdmin page and open up your database.

5. From here select the wp_comments table.

6. Once in the table click the SQL button at the top of the screen.

7. You will be presented with a box and a “Go” button in the bottom right. Inside this box enter the code below that is green. Make sure to enter it into your SQL box exactly as shown so nothing gets messed up.

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 0

8. Make sure to enter it exactly as its shown above, this will select and delete all the pending comments in your que. Simply click the “Go” button to make it happen, after you do it will return results saying xxx number of comments deleted. (SUCCESS).

All you have left to do now is log into your wp-admin panel and see how clean and pretty it looks! My suggestion is to install some GOOD comment blocking plugins so you won’t have this problem again!

If you found this useful return the favor by commenting below and by joining my newsletter like tons of others. Enjoy your spam free day!

The problem is most bloggers don’t follow a simple blogging plan with each post, nothing is formatted or in a easy to checkoff list. Your visitors want what they can get not what they can give you (stop thinking they do).

Here are my 4 ways to improve internal traffic of your blog!

1. Link to older posts in each new post you create. This one can be tough at times I know, however its really vital to get people clicking deeper within your blog. When I link to other posts it really helps my traffic and stay time go up but it also helps improve internal seo rank and power giving lots of pages in my blog link juice! I made a post about internal linking before for page rank bleed down that you can read if you want to know more about this.

2. Add a search bar to your sidebar. I know this may sound silly but you wouldn’t believe how many blogs I see that don’t offer at least the stock wordpress search widget you can place on your sidebar. Not only does it allow your users to find more content they may be interested in but it also allows you as the blogger to search to relative post topics that you can link to like in step 1 above.

3. Write great opening text. The first paragraph of text for each new post you write should entice visitors to your blog, this will hopefully draw there attention to stay on the post and read the whole thing!

4. Add images, video and graphs to your posts when possible. By adding more interactive / visual stimulants into your posts readers will naturally look at them out of curiosity (video is getting bigger and bigger read how to start video blogging a post I did awhile back).

So apply these strategies to your blog and be sure to comment below if you already have or if you have more ideas to help others improve internal traffic! Don’t forget to signup to my newsletter and receive my eBook that guarantees you can make money today!