Lynette Chandler, at site-reference.com, had a lot of good ideas. I'm sure you'll read a lot of them below thinking, "Hmmm, that must've been what Xomba's webmasters were thinking." But I'm going to go ahead and comment on the suggestions as if you're not thinking at all (though I hope you'll comment on this post and do the various rating-raising activities I'm not eVen gOing To mEntion lol).

5 Ways To Blog Without A Lot Of Work

by Lynette Chandler

1.Blog as a Team

When people think of a blog, they sometimes think of a diary type setting… and you're the only person allowed to make entries in your diary, right? Let's shift our thinking away from that for a minute and consider that a blog can have multiple contributors all writing about the same topic. Why not have a team of people posting to a blog for maximum content and traffic?

"Blogging as a team" is sort of what you agreed to do when you signed-on to Xomba; though it might have been understood as something closer to 'write HERE; read THERE & click their a-- umm ... things.' But really, start to think of these blogs (especially if you want to make money on them) as more 'discussions you lead' than 'thoughts you keep for yourself.'

2.Hire a team of bloggers.

Newspapers have contributors, blogs can too. If you've ever used writers to do articles and content for you , they can do the same type of thing with a blog. Many of the most successful blogs are already doing this. The combination of group promotion effort, regular updates and pinging can help bring in traffic quickly. One thing to note here is blogs are a somewhat social tool. Some very popular niche blogs are not all that visible in the search engines, yet they get a lot of traffic because people recommend them and they become a sort of buzz hub. Search engines do not always pick up on this but they do eventually. This is why group blogging can be very powerful because you're leveraging the power of not one (your) influence group but several people's influence group. If you do pay your bloggers, you can always offset this cost by displaying Adsense ads. Many popular blogs earn a good amount in Adsense, that they make a nice profit even after paying their bloggers team. After a while it becomes a passive income stream.

That is close to what the Xombsters were thinking—except that they hire us for free and instead give us the AdSense-money. But we each have to remember that we also serve as the early crowd to the blogs of the other Xombacrats.

3. Materials you already have.

Have some old articles, interviews or audio laying around and not sure what to do with it? Why not break it down into blog-sized segments that you can quickly and easily add to your blog when you're at a loss for what to blog about.

Think of when you were in middle/junior-high school, and had to write a report-on-whatever ... same deal.

4.Include audio.

For some of us, it's much easier to speak than to write. So, mix up your blog. Carry a small portable MP3 recorder or blog by phone. This is a very convenient way for busy moms to get some blogging done while they are doing the days running around with the kids , chores and more. Maybe you're stuck in traffic, or waiting for the kids to get out piano class or school. An idea or thought strikes and you think "Oh I need to share that on my blog" so, pick up your phone (assuming you have a cell phone - and many of us do), dial a number, say what's on your mind, save it and you're done. Your blog is published. If you're using Blogger, you can do this for free through AudioBlog. It involves calling a long distance number, but most cell phone plans don't charge extra for long distance anyway so you're not incurring any extra cost.



If you're using another blog publishing tool like WordPress, Movable Type or TypePad, then you'll need a service like AudioBlogger.com. This one is a paid service but it's only $4.95 a month and it gives you more options like a nice flash player, statistics and even video that make it worth while.

Yeah, what she said.

5.Automating.

Want to save time on posting? If you have a good idea of the things you want to post about and you use Wordpress as your publishing tool, then you've got a time saving option available to you - automating your posts. You can use the forward blog entry option to schedule entries to be posted on the day and time of your choosing. This can be very helpful if you want to write up a lot of posts at once but don't want them all posted at once.



Let's face it. There will be times we have a ton to say and times we have little or nothing to share. Instead of having multiple entries one day and nothing over the next few days, by using forward entry you can blog everyday of the week. Or rather you blog once and the blog publishing tool does the job automatically the rest of the week. You can even forward blog for weeks and months ahead of time.



Note: Blogger users unfortunately cannot do this because Blogger publishes all entries regardless what you date it immediately.

I don't know if Xomba has this; but I'm not into this for the money—more just to 'spread whatever news I got.' If you are in it for the money, just write on your own computer's space when you got the time; getting the stuff in by whatever deadline you set is then just a moment's copy/paste.

About This Author

Affectionately nicknamed Tech Diva by her peers, Lynette Chandler regularly dispenses blogging and RSS help to countless business owners. Visit http://www.BloggingStarterPack.com to learn more about blogging and get a copy of her video free.