Mosts posts you see on MaxPower have been crafted over a number of days (possibly even weeks). Sometimes the research takes a long time to complete, sometimes not. Still other times I just don’t want to write anymore on a subject and never end up publishing the post. What follows is a brief overeview of some of the stories that never got published and that I’m sick of seeing in the ‘Drafts’ pile. Consider the two shorts stories that follow kind of like blooging bloopers (except no laugh track). » Read the rest of the entry..

The Undersigned asked people to complete his short blogging survey. I decided to do it because 1) unlike most surveys, most of the questions made sense, and 2) I wanted to see how other people answered. So in the spirit of sharing, here is my answered survey: » Read the rest of the entry..

Like many part time / hobby webmasters, my goal is to make my hobby (blogging) self sustaining. I’d love to make A LOT of money doing this, but in reality, I’d just like to make some money — enough to cover costs. Up until recently, I have been able to keep the costs ridiculously low. But since I moved hosts, the costs have crept up.

In an effort to recoup some of the costs, I rejigged the ads (Adsense) and the payout has been better, but I’d like to generate a little more revenue (like I’m sure many people would like). I considered a number of methods of making a little more money from this site and as I studied the multiple options to me I came upon one very important realization: most ‘monetized’ websites are monotonous. » Read the rest of the entry..

Besides the spell check provided by the google toolbar, I also use a variety of sources to help me write. Here are a few completely free books from Project Guttenburg that I have found to help me write (at least a little). Not only helpful (grammar and style), they also inspire and instruct and are good for that ‘perfect’ title to attract attention. By using these resources, I have no doubt that anyone can achieve serene triumph through newly found emotive power.

1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Reprint of the author’s Lexicon balatronicum; a dictionary of buckish slang, university wit, and pickpocket eloquence (and now considerably altered and enlarged, » Read the rest of the entry..

The following post is inspired by the request at problogger.net for articles surounding the theme, “Blogging Goals.” In last weeks episode, I used Frank Lloyd Wright’s quotes as inspiration on the topic ‘effective blogging.’ This week, I’ll use another one of his quotes to start into the topic ‘blogging goals’ where I will argue that an important goal for any blogger is to avoid automation which ensures originality and prevents the loss of precious ‘blogging mojo’. » Read the rest of the entry..

Part 1 in this series explored the introduction of nofollow, its failure at stopping web spam, and rhetorically asked why a good webmaster should use the nofollow attribute. In the second part below, I dig deeper: Google is full of smart people, they must have known that nofollow wouldn’t work at stopping webspam. So what was the real reason for its introduction? » Read the rest of the entry..

Part one in a three part series.
No more nofollow — I don’t believe it works. It was introduced to solve a problem for the search engines. The problem isn’t webspam even though that was the guise of its introduction. The problem is bias and the nofollow solution is a bad one; it robs and devalues meaningful relationships on the internet. Before you read any further, ask yourself this question:

Should a blogger who does not allow comment spam also use the nofollow attribute to prevent ‘voting’ for linked websites?

» Read the rest of the entry..

The following post is inspired by the request at problogger.net for articles surounding the theme, “Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers.” There are many many more quotes by Frank Lloyd Wright that could be applied to this topic — care to share?

Utility: The quality or condition of being useful.

The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Consider: your blog is your building. You are the architect. The ensemble of rooms (pages and content) should be carefully considered that comfort and utility (ease of use and usefulness) go hand in hand with beauty (style).

Make your site easy to use, beautiful, and above all useful. Anyone can reprint others ideas, words, and pictures (link blogs), only architects can create original content.

Mr Wright said some other inspiring things for effective bloggers: » Read the rest of the entry..