The blogging world has changed dramatically in the past few years. These days, you don’t have all the time in the world to implement all the brilliant ideas that you may have. You have to be ready to pull the trigger on your ideas as fast as possible or someone else will beat you to them. As a blogger, you can’t afford to be distracted with activities that don’t necessarily contribute to your business. The more time you waste, the farther you fall behind.

Here are 6 ways to avoid distractions as a blogger:

1. Being obsessed w/ Google Analytics: all publishers need to keep an eye on their Analytics reports. But you can’t spend the majority of your days looking at your stats. That’s not the best way to use your time. I am not suggesting you should not analyze your stats periodically. But checking your Analytics reports every hour of the day is not a productive activity.
2. Checking Google AdSense earnings all day long: I used to do this myself a few years ago. When I got started with blogging, the concept of getting paid for writing online was very new to me. It was exciting to see my AdSense earnings reach new levels. Looking back at that time, I probably wasted a lot of time obsessing over my earnings instead of taking on more productive tasks.
3. Playing too much with keyword tools: there are all kinds of cool keyword tools available online. A tool won’t make your business great by itself. You have to actually use it for your business to get results. Playing around with all the new keyword tools that come out is not the best way to spend your time.
4. tracking social media comments all day long: I don’t know about you but I am involved in multiple social networks. I get a ton of comments on Twitter and Google+ all day long. These sites can be quite distracting when you are trying to get your work done. While you should try to be active in those communities, you should not spend the majority of your time responding to comments on them. In some cases, you may be able to outsource a part of this process to save yourself some time.
5. Playing with too many ideas: this used to set me back a whole lot in my early days of blogging. In those days, I was so excited about blogging that I wanted to pursue multiple ideas. It is nice to have a lot of ideas for your business. But if you do not put your ideas into action, you will fall behind.
6. Being obsessed with search engine rankings: search engine rankings change all the time. Some people are just obsessed with their rankings. Going from #3 to #6 on Google is not the end of the world. Your rankings don’t change everyday. So checking them every hour is not the best way to spend your time.

Spending time on non-core activities will set your business back over the long run. Avoiding the above distractions lets you spend your time on more productive activities.

Some folks assume that the harder they work, the more success they are going to achieve. It is true that in order to be successful in life, we need to be serious and dedicated towards our cause. But working 24 hours a day, 365 days a year will have a negative effect on you. I have found this the hard way. If you push your body and mind the hard way, you are going to burn out and become less productive. Taking long breaks can not only help you recharge you battery, it can make you fall in love with your blog all over again.

Many bloggers feel hesitant about taking long breaks from their blogs (breaks longer than a week). If you have scheduled some posts ahead of time or can hire someone to take over for you in the short-term, there is no reason you should not take long breaks. Here are 6 reasons to do so:

1. avoid burn out: there was a time I was working close to 18 hours a day, managing multiple blogs, writing codes, and promoting products. I was able to handle that for a while. After 15 months of doing so, I realized that was not the way to go. I took a month-long break and that did wonders for me. Taking short and long breaks is essential to avoid burning your brain out.
2. regroup: becoming a successful blogger takes time and effort. You will have to face various challenges. Things will most likely go wrong from time to time. Taking breaks helps you handle major setbacks with a clear mind.
3. find new ideas: sometimes, it is too hard to think outside the box and see the error of your ways when you are too attached to your work. If you are working 18 hours a day just to keep your blogging business going, you won’t have a whole lot of time to think about new outside-the-box ideas for your business. Taking a break can help with that.
4. find out what you could be missing: I am a big believer in people pursuing what they love to do. Not everyone gets to do it. But if you have decided to quit your job to pursue your dreams, you may as well do something you love. Those who truly love blogging will miss their work after just a couple of days. If you are having nightmares about going back to your work, you should probably change things up.
5. experience the world: experienced individuals who read, travel, and experience the world around them on a regular basis are more likely to succeed in their blogging career. The more you experience the world, the more you will have to share with your audience.
6. find inspiration: have you fallen out of love with your blog? Taking long breaks could rekindle your love and inspire you to push your blog to more interesting directions. Your work will be a whole lot better when you find your inspiration again.

Taking long breaks is not something many bloggers feel comfortable doing. It can do your blogging business wonders though.

[Image credit: theswedish]

Let’s say you are looking for a baseball application. All you have to do is search for the word baseball on Quixey. It will go to work for you and finds you applications for Windows, iOS, Facebook, Chrome, and everything in between. Quixey not only shows you a list of relevant apps, it includes useful snippets of information to help you make better decisions.

You will have multiple ways to filter your results which is nice. If you are looking for apps that run on your gadgets, Quixey is one time-saving tool you should try.

Credit: Ayla87

Most of us have role models in everything we do. That applies to blogging as well. I have met many folks who follow and approve everything their favorite “gurus” do in the blogging world. Many of us look at the success others have had in the blogging world and assume they can’t do no wrong. Nobody is perfect. Everyone stumbles and makes mistakes. Those who follow people blindly without appreciating their heroes’ shortcomings are bound to make terrible mistakes.

Choosing the perfect role model is impossible. We are all flawed. Understanding that very fact goes a long way towards helping us learn from the gurus but avoid making the same mistakes they do. Just because people fail sometimes does not mean they are a failure all the time. Some bloggers let the failure of their role models get to them. Here are 6 ways you can come to terms with that:

• everybody makes mistakes: I have always believed studying other successful bloggers is key to taking my business to the next level. There is a difference between analyzing what people do and learning from their mistakes and following someone blindly. No one has become successful without making mistakes. Just because you can see others making obvious mistakes does not mean everything they are doing is wrong.
• don’t judge people: sometimes people make mistakes because they do not have the full picture. In some cases, they do so out of desperation. When someone fails in something, it is not necessary for you to judge them on the decisions they have made. Just learn from what didn’t work for them and move on.
• nobody is perfect: this is a universal truth. No matter how much money you have, how many blogs you have sold, or how many people are working for you, you are not perfect. Nobody is. Following some of these blogging “gurus” as if they are divine beings is just not smart. You should always study what others are doing but make your own decisions.
• don’t follow anyone blindly: I have seen many bloggers that follow their role models closely. They implement everything they say and expect to have success. That is not how you run a business. To run a successful blog, you need to be a leader. While it is fine to learn new things from others, you should always make decisions by yourself. Doing things just because others are doing it is not always smart.
• take responsibility for your actions: in order to build a successful blog, bloggers need to learn how to take responsibility. When you make a decision, you are responsible for it. It is easy to blame your gurus for the trouble your business is having. But they didn’t make the decisions. You did.
• choose your role models right: not everyone who has made a lot of money can be a good role model. If you must have role models in the blogging world, make sure you choose them wisely.

Nobody is perfect. By studying what others have done right and wrong, you will have an easier time making more knowledgeable decisions that will work for your business.

In order to run a successful blog, you are going to have work with a decent hosting partner. You may not get a whole lot of traffic when you are starting but if you are dedicated, your website will grow over time. Many folks assume that going with the cheapest hosting partner possible is not a bad idea, especially when they are just starting. The trouble is there are many lousy web hosts around. Their bad service can kill your business or set it back dramatically.

Choosing a web host is very similar to finding someone to marry. I can tell you from experience that moving large blogs from one host to another is not fun and can have short-term negative effects on your rankings. Paying attention to these 7 factors could help you choose the right web hosting partner:

• features: this should go without saying. If your website runs a certain version of PHP and MySQL, you would want to work with a host that supports those. You also want to make sure you get enough monthly bandwidth and storage with your hosting plan. Running a website is more than just installing WordPress. Security and business features matter too.
• track record: no matter how great an offer looks on paper, you should take time to research your web hosting partner to make sure you choose the right one for your business. A company with a bad track record is not worth dealing with.
• support: in the past few years, I have worked with a number of web hosting companies. Many of them promise great support but do not offer anything close to it.  A web host that hires inexperienced tech support members is worth ignoring too. When it comes to hosting, you should try to work with a company that shows it cares.
• add-on services: our past web host was a great company. But it was awful when it came to offering services that could help businesses. For instance, they did not provide server monitoring and offsite backup. Not offering those services was a huge turn off for our team. Always ask the right questions from your hosting partner before parting ways with your money.
• plan flexibility: I don’t know about you but I do not like to pay more than I have to for the services I sign up for. As your blog grows, you may have to pay more for your hosting needs. Working with a company that offers only a couple of plans can be problematic. In those cases, you could end up being forced to move to a plan that offers much more than you need, costing you a fortune in the process.
• control: just because a web host is charging a considerable amount of money for its service does not mean it gives its customers total control. You wouldn’t expect to get too much control when you are paying $5 a month for your plan. Things should be different if you are a dedicated server customer.
• contracts: always take time to find out about what’s covered in your contract with your hosting partner. Does your partner offer service guarantees? Can you get out of your contract ahead of time and get a refund for unused period on your contract? It is always better to be informed than sorry when dealing with web hosting companies.

Choosing a great web host takes a lot of time and effort. Paying attention to the above factors should help you avoid making costly mistakes. Have you got any suggestions on how to find a great web host? Please share them below.

Image Credit: sommer2011

Most people love to get quick answers to their questions. Adding live chat functionality to your website is one way to make sure that happens. Help On Click is an awesome service that adds interactive chat to your website. Your visitors can take advantage of it to ask you their questions. The fun part is you can see what they are typing before they submit it (giving you more time to look things up).

Help On Click is a fully hosted service. So you don’t have to worry about installing the chat on your machine. It keeps track of your real traffic information (and user status). It has a system tray application that alerts you when someone has a question waiting for you. Want to save some time handling requests from your visitors? That’s what predefined messages are for.

Overall, Help On Click is a pretty simple and interactive chat system for your business. It lets you take better care of your existing customers.

Random Word Machine is actually a very simple tool. All you have to do is choose the language you want to create your word in and click on the “generate” button. I have to warn you that not all the words coming from this tool are worth a consideration. Play with it long enough, and you may come up with a totally random and cool name for your product.

This tool uses an algorithm based on neurolinguistic theories to find you easy to pronounce words most of the time. It can be quite useful for brainstorming or you could get lucky and hit the jackpot with it. It does have an iPhone application so the fun never has to end. Random Word Machine does support Twitter sharing, which is nice.

I don’t know about you but I have been spending a lot of time on Google+ lately, especially after we launched Plus Examiner. It should go without saying that G+ is one of the most exciting platforms around.  With Google finally opening G+ API to developers, it is only a matter of time before we see some cool apps made for this service. You don’t need the API to start using some of the shortcuts available for G+ though. These shortcuts are easy-to-learn and save you time contributing to G+.

Here are 10 G+ shortcuts you don’t want to miss:

1. use bold font: *text*
2. make strike-through text: -text-
3. make your words italic: _text_
4. scroll down by one block: hold J key
5. scroll up by one block: hold K key
6. scroll down: hold space
7. scroll up: hold shift + space
8. comment: select block + enter
9. hyperlink someone’s name: use + or @ plus name (start name with small letter for better results).
10. find permalink: click on timestamp for each entry

Did I miss any shortcut? Please add your suggestions below.

P.S. let’s connect on G+.

I have a lot of respect for people who spend their time and money to educate themselves and earn high degrees. But I have always considered business schools as overrated. I should know as I went to a good one. If you spend some time at a good business school, there is a good chance you will see a handful of folks who truly get it and want to learn things. Then you have got people who talk about ideation, innovation, and thinking outside-the-box all the time without truly understanding what they mean. It’s nice to know all the “cool” buzzwords but that’s not how you run and grow a business. Let’s make no mistake about it. Thinking outside-the-box works. But you have to define what that means. Adding a new SEO plugin to your blog is not thinking outside-the-box nor is developing an iPhone app for it. It should go without saying that you need to do a bit of “thinking” here. While not all bloggers face the same challenges, here are 6 ways you can truly think outside-the-box.

• identify new needs: if you see a successful blog about making money online and decide to just clone it, you are not thinking outside of anything. You are just being a follower. To be a leader, you need to do things others are not doing. That includes identifying topics that others are not talking about or addressing properly.
• develop new angles: just because others have written about the topics you are interested about does not mean you can’t cover them. By doing a little bit of thinking you should be able to find a new angle to look at things. If you make a habit of this, you will go far in this business.
• try the impossible: we all know what sets successful people from the rest. Those folks never give up. The rest will succumb to their fears and lack of confidence when faced with their demons. Somethings are truly impossible to achieve. That does not mean you should not aim to reach them. The word “impossible” is a bit subjective here. Some folks find it impossible to ever make more than $1000 a month from their blogs while others find it tough covering events around the globe. If something is hard and others are not doing it, you should give it a look.
• change the game: that is exactly what sites such as TechCrunch (the old one) and Mashable have done in the past. These folks have found new channels to reach their readers and tried all kinds of strategies to grow their businesses. If you find the market you are involved in difficult to master, you should try changing the game to level the playing field.
• observe & learn: let’s say you are sitting in a real box and don’t know how to get out of it. You can keep trying to find holes or an opening in the box. You can also sit back and look at how others approach the process. If you are not paying attention to what others are doing, you are doing your business and blog a disservice.
• identify the box: this goes back to my first few sentences in this post. If you don’t know what box you are trying to think outside of,  how are you going to pull anything off? Doing some research and thinking a bit should give you an idea what others are doing and what your options are as far as finding ways to beat you competitors. Just because you feel you are thinking outside the box, that does not make it true.

Thinking outside the box may sound cool when a slick businessman says it, but it actually takes a lot of work. If you make a habit of it, your business will have a better chance to stay competitive in the toughest market conditions.

SuperAntiSpyware: a superb software application that goes through the files sitting on your computer to identify malware and other exploits. Its database is updated on a regular basis. It is not 100% foolproof but does a good job getting rid of annoying spamware on your computer.

SpyBot: a super fast spam destroyer that can capture threats that other suites may not be able to. It has an extensive database of patterns to help you identify nasty spamware before they do major damage on your site.

Hijack This: a must have for anyone running a computer on Windows. It goes through your files and identifies things that spamware may have changed on it. Its reports make fixing your computer much more straight forward.

If you love your blog, you will never use a virus-infected computer to post articles to it. It is just too risky. The above software kits identify and destroy viruses before they can do your business major harm.