So how do you avoid that kind of inconsistency? The answer may be found outside your notebook computer.

It has been found that moods can affect work and an improvement in a person’s mood results in a positive outcome at work very often.  There have been studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Ohio State University’s Fisher School of Business that strongly suggests that mood you bring to work sets the tone for the rest of day and affects productivity.

Mood improvement differs for person to person, but here are a few tips that may help bloggers:

• Blog in a comfortable place – Blogging on the go can be exciting but really stressful. In order to come up with a quality post, try to find a place where you can site comfortably and has good lighting.
• Take a little break – So you’re a blogging junkie, but that doesn’t mean you should be in front of your computer 24/7. Little breaks can be a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively.
• Work in your own machine – Have you tried blogging in someone else’s notebook? It feels like you’re visiting a foreign country if you ask me. Try as much as possible to bring your own machine if you’re blogging actively and on the go.
• Avoid blogging right off the bat – Athletes always warms up before competition and there’s wisdom in that. Some bloggers may find it refreshing to watchthat funny viral YouTube video before opening WordPress or Blogger.

Like I’ve said, ways of improving one’s mood vary. But one thing is clear: a better mood will result in better, more enjoyable blogging.

One of the impending casualties of the blogging space obsolescence is live blogging. Yeah, there was a time when people blogged real-time in their respective blogs and kept updating one single post in rapid succession to cover an event. A couple of years ago, as blogs were slowly gaining prominence, live blogging was the apex of covering an event live via blogging.

But due to the emergence of microblogging and platforms such as Twitter and Plurk, live blogging is on its way to extinction. Microblogging is fast and automatic, making the process of constantly updating a blog post cumbersome and clunky. Add to that the proliferation of third-party sites and apps that support micro-blogging, live blogging can be officially be considered a dying art.

But before we say “good riddance” to live blogging,  I believe it can still have a place in the blogging ecosystem. Remember that one key limitation of microblogging is the number of characters (e.g. Twitter’s 140 character limit). Live blogging is essentially free from this constraint. Another is the multimedia aspect of live blogging, such as the ability to post audio and video streams into a blog post.

Live blogging may not be hottest thing right now, but I believe it still has a use in specific situations to keep it from becoming completely obsolete.

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UPDATE: Nah, I change my mind. Live blogging is dead.

1. Have a domain name – you need an easy recall and easy to type domain name.  It should be yours too.  While having your ISPs domain name works, having your own domain name makes you a little professional.  Domains are easy to acquire, install and use.  Go to godaddy.com and get one for less than $10.  You can try listening to GeekBrief.tv too, I know Cali Lewis gives GoDaddy.com codes thereby saving you a few extra bucks. Having a domain name and using it as your emails domain address proves ownership or affiliation to the domain too.  It’s a little tricky but believe you me, if you say own “mygadgets.com” and plan to sell ad space to bestbuy or circuit city… your email needs to be “jim@mygadgets.com”… professional, shows ownership, and er… cool.
2. Have a completed about page – the first page that the ad network jumps to is the About Page.  They’d like to know a little more about you.  After you hand in your ad proposal, and if they’re at all interested, they’d hit your page right away to find out more about you, your webpage/blog or your company.  So you gotta have a completed about page.

For instance, Ahmed recommends you put in your content first, then other elements later. Good for SEO. Same with using proper headers and nesting these accordingly (H1, H2, H3). How about loading your javascript at the end of the page rather than the beginning? Great for making sites appear faster.

Then for usability, there’s the use of tabindex, which is great with people who are fond of using the keyboard to navigate rather than the mouse.

And then there’s conforming to web standards and conventions. I know designers these days do their best to conform. However, there are still some who use HTML elements for purposes other than their original intent. Yes, that’s thinking out of the box. But that “box” was created for a purpose. And sometimes structuring things differently makes it difficult to make changes down the road, especially when you change the use of commonly-used tags like LI, SPAN and P.

For non-designers or non-developers, these things might sound a little too technical. But if you look under the hood of your blog (i..e, the underlying code of the theme), or at least even your blog’s source, it pays to clean it up or tweak it to improve on the end-user experience. Even if you shave just a few seconds off loading time, or even if the improvements seem trivial, multiply that a thousand times over, and both your readers and your server will appreciate it.

I am sure you have at least one friend or loved one who has not grasped the concept of URLs and remains highly dependent on Google for finding their way around the web. If you’ll take a closer look at their web browsers, you’ll see why it really isn’t their fault.

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The very nature of URLs seems to be another major stumbling block. Ordinary people don’t understand the use of a “www” and a “.com”, or that the “@” symbol is used only in e-mail addresses. They don’t know how to share websites through URLs either—unless there’s a button with explicit instructions that tell them how.

Add to that the explosion of all the domain suffixes like .me, .travel, and even .xxx. Not to mention all the malicious parties that wish to take advantage of their ignorance—stealing and spoofing personal information through misspelled URLs, search keywords, and deceptive e-mails.

For me, the analogy would be this. Using URLs to go to webpages is like giving an exact, specific street address. Like Number 5 Main Avenue, Gotham City, or the like. Going to a website via a search engine would be like giving landmarks and asking people to look for signages. It’s like telling a friend to go to Main Avenue, look for the big brown building across City Hall, with the green revolving door. At the ground floor of that building would be your shop, which is right next to the florist’s.

Complicated, eh? My point is that I agree with Ia’s commentary that this would involve some search optimization on the part of the website owner. What if the florist closed shop? What if the building administrator painted the revolving door red? Then your friend would have a hard time finding you. Two years from now, the building might even be grey or blue-colored.

Accessing sites via search engines works this way, too. Today you might be number one for the keyword blogging pro on Google. Tomorrow, we may not be.

Another analogy would be the use of telephone numbers. You can call or SMS me on my exact, specific phone number, complete with country code, area code and number. You can also search for me by calling a directory service or 411, but that doesn’t always work the way I would want it to. The phone company might have several people named “Angelo Racoma.” Or I might not be listed at all. And of course, some people would rather be able to contact me directly.

So are URLs here to stay? Of course they are. It’s just perhaps that a lot of people are increasingly finding it convenient to just key in a phrase or keyword onto that ubiquitous search box at the top of the browser window. No more keying in WWW or .COM. Even that causes confusion, with the multitude of top-level domains.

In the future, URLs might just take a backseat, with more and more people doing searches than directly keying in web addresses. I can liken this to AOL and Compuserve. Remember the old times, when companies asked you to key in AOL keywords to access their portals, rather than URLs?

Admitting there are blogs I hate and blogs I love.  Such is my online life.  What I hate I still visit for that slim chance of finding a diamond of a post… in the rough.  Those I love… ah too many.

I’m in a little retrospect mood today… allow me to rest with all the WordPress news to talk about ME for a while.  I’ve been in radio broadcasting for the past 15 years.  While my degree says I should be in the IT industry, I somehow have managed to specialize in media, radio and the internet.  Now I’m not really sure which path I took that led me to do part-time blogging work, but I like it.  I’d agree with posts here at bloggingpro.com that it is HARD to make this your main job.  From this post it is near impossible to produce 2,000 posts/month… I guess.

Anyway, let me shift gear here and say that media/radio and blogging do have their similarities.  Being from both worlds now, these things just stick out.  An important similar thing I’ve learned through my media/radio years is content is king.  A well written script is not about the reporter… it’s about the subject… the news item.  Media icons like Larry King, Oprah, Anderson Cooper, Barbara Walters etc. would have that uncanny/supernatural way of making themselves invisible in an interview… it’s the subject that is highlighted… it’s them on the spotlight.  In the end, the readers/viewers know more about the subject, better informed.  A well written blog post is the same.

Whatever it is one blogs about, remember “Content is King”.  At the end of the day, your readers must say “Hey, I’ve learned something new from you today” or “Now I see that clearly now, thanks”.  It is hard work, and hey there maybe a real chance you wouldn’t hit the quota posts you need… but still, you have better served your readers when you put in more.  You’d be a sought-after blogger who made real sense. 

I so love this quote right now…

“When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.:  ~Enrique Jardiel Poncela

Probably not. Or at least there’s no compelling reason to be too happy because of this news, unless you run a video blog with a lot of flash-based videos. I would agree with our resident designer Ia that Google’s new Flash-indexing ability might be misused by designers who are fond of designing in Flash without much regard for usability and accessibility.

Google’s efforts to read Flash still seem to be in the premature stages. Typical Google, they always release their products in beta without being wary of the consequences.

By consequences I mean clients who are now running around telling their web designers to create animated intros and the extravagant interfaces for their websites. I can’t really shoot down this little achievement by Google—except that it’s getting scarily smarter everyday and should try to have more features than issues when they launch a product.

More importantly, I can only continue to condemn those who misuse Flash without any regard for accessibility, much less usability, whatsoever.

If you are serious about optimizing your blog for the search engines, then I think the first thing to do would make sure you have good content!

To make the average annual US income of $60,000, you need to make $34 an hour. If you are paid $5 a blog post, you would have to write 12,000 blog posts. At $25 a blog post, you would have to publish 2,400. For $50 per post, that’s 1200 posts. At $100 per blog post, you would have to generate 600 posts.

The overall sense I’m getting here is that blogging for money isn’t quite sustainable, considering that most bloggers (that I know of) are getting way below the ideal rate of $300+ per post–and that is for top-quality, well-researched output.

There are 52 weeks in a year. Most paid bloggers need to produce a minimum of 3 posts a week. That’s 156 posts a year. Divide the annual average income of $60,000 by 156 posts, that’s $385 per post. Anyone getting paid that much to blog? I doubt it. Notch this up to 5 posts a week and you’d need 260 blog posts at $230 per post. That’s better but most bloggers are paid $$25 or less per post.

At $25 a post, you’d need to write 2,400 blog posts to earn $60,000 a year. How long would that take you? Do you have 2,400 original blog posts within you?

Another factor not taken into consideration here, I would say, is those working in the blogging industry who are not in the US. So that means your cost of living (or the income you need in order to be happy, or at least to survive) may differ. It might be higher in some regions, say Western Europe, Tokyo or Singapore. But it would definitely be lower in other places where cost of living is low. So for instance some would be well off with a fraction of the $60,000 annual income that is cited as the target income.

Still, Lorelle comes up with some figures on how long it takes to research and write good-quality posts. She also touches on the per-post or per-hour argument.

So the question here is not about how much you are earning from blogging, which has probably been discussed in many many posts around the blogosphere. It’s how much you should be earning from blogging. Suffice to say that for me $60,000 per year would go a long, long way.

Well, some of these sites put on a great first impression. They look like great places to work. Sleek designs, flashy graphics, and text from other members contributing. They are all getting paid for their hard work, right?

Many of these sites state that “you will be paid for your content” and similar. However, there are catches: for one, there is no guarantee they will actually feature your work, and I’ve seen sites that claim the rights to your content even if they don’t feature it (they essentially get your content for free without pay); next, these sites usually determine how much you will be paid on an article by article basis, and this just doesn’t seem right as the writer should set the rate; finally, many of these sites don’t have a chance of making it to the big time and won’t promote your brand in the process.

I would say it’s unfair to characterize blog networks as scams. In general (most) blog networks are legitimate businesses and most likely if they’re still running after a year of operation they are likely doing well, in terms of revenues and even profit. Sure, there may be some fly-by-night outfits out there that might be a waste of time, in terms of earning opportunity.

In this case I would say brand matters. If a network runs great sites and have great readers and writers, who form a good community, then in all likelihood they’re legit, and they can afford great talent. But if it’s not so, then better do more research. I agree with James that you should do research, and you should always read the fine print before committing to something.

I’ve been working with and for blog networks for more than three years now, and I’ve mostly had positive experiences with all of them.

Some resources you might want to check out (mostly our own):

• Blog Network Watch
• Blogger Jobs
• Performancing Job Board

The mayor wanted former town residents to know what’s going on with their old town.  He wanted to let them know what’s new… AND what they can do to help their roots develop in this new cyberworld.

I smiled… literally smiled wide!  This is the kind of mind that aims at progress.  Blogging about their small city is a great progressive step.  He’s going to pass this project on to the youth council, who seem to be gungho about the entire thing.

I’ll probably start by dropping a few URLs about blogging and see where their interest brings them.  I for one can probably demo what and how setting up a blog site is.  Do you know any URLs that can help them?

Funny how blogging is taking its aim at even the rural communities of South East Asia.  It’s the grassroots communities that, I think, can benefit from blogging.  Tons of things may happen if they keep telling people about their small town.  Opportunities, change, development… progress.

Keeping my fingers crossed that this will press on!