I believe that a blogger who is on top of their game is just as valuable as a staff writer. Yet, you will often find that the compensation doesn’t match.

This is the very issue I wrestled with when considering an offer to write a weekly blog post for US News & World Report - for zero compensation. Despite a strong reaction from my peers and readers of this blog, I decided to do it. So far, it has translated into what I think is a nice resume-booster and about 60 click-throughs a month.

I’ll leave it for you to decide if the time I put into writing each post is worth it. For now, I think it is. But it’s a fine line between a blogger guest posting just for the exposure and mainstream media looking for free content. Which leads me to the “Write My Blog” contest I came across on CNBC.

According to Sports Biz blogger Darren Rovell…

It’s always hard taking a vacation these days as a reporter. Being on the beat all the time is just part of the job…Since I want to take a real vacation and get away, I don’t want to be blogging. At the same time, I do want my blog to continue to be the destination it has become for all things sports business…So if you’re a sports biz junkie, you frequent this site and you think you know your stuff, here is your chance to guest host my blog on CNBC.com.

Read more about the contest and enter.

What are your thoughts? Good exposure for a blogger; or mainstream media freeloading? Perhaps both. Speak your mind!

Everyone knows that almost any blog post is better with images. However, getting them can be a difficult matter. With a maze of licensing and fair use issues making it hard to decide what is and is not legal to use, many bloggers don’t wish to use images that they have not taken themselves.

But while using your own images is always the best way to go, there are several great sources to help you find and locate images that you can use as part of your blog posts. In fact, there are some very neat tools designed specifically to help you correctly license and use other people’s photography, art and more.

The best part of all is that these tools are free. They will not cost you a dime to use and, if used correctly, can let you fill up your blog posts with as many images as your heart desires. read more

I am a Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V junkie. But sometimes I just get plain sick of copy and pasting URLs in my blog posts. A new tool, I share a link, looks to streamline the process, permitting blog owners and Webmasters to install a button on their sites.

According to the creators:

“I share a link simplifies the process of sharing URLs on what ever bookmark tool used and helps you increasing the visibility of your site and its content.”

The app is available for FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Wordpress.

When the button is clicked on, a new window opens. The box contains the original link, as well as links to share on Facebook, del.icio.us, Digg and Twitter.

In this cluttered world, a little simplicity goes a long way.

Break glass in case of emergency.

Blogging might be relatively safe when compared to an underwater electrician, but every job comes with its own set of hazards. Here are some measures to take to protect yourself while blogging.

EYES: Follow the 20/20/20 rule. This is something I do for a week and then forget about - but it’s key. For every 20 minutes you’re staring at the computer or a document - look 20 feet away for 20 seconds. More.

HANDS: If you are suffering from mild to moderate carpal tunnel symptoms, it is more important than ever to stretch your wrists. Simple things like flexing your hand in different directions and making a fist can help tremendously. Blogging is just like running, you should always do your warm-up exercises before getting started. Exercises.

BACK: I’m not sure how fast you write your blogs, but if you’re a slow typer, you could be sedentary for quite some time. A simple seated twist yoga exercise, conducted with your legs, can help alleviate pressure on your spine. Watch it here.

STRESS: The real silent killer. Perhaps your blogging about an annoying topic. Or simply frustrated that you can’t think of a good topic or get that Web traffic where you want it. There are 50 things you can do right now to chill out.

What’s in your blogging first aid kit? Band-Aids, anyone?

Finally, after years of blogging in the corner of a one bedroom apartment, I will be moving into an office. It will be a pleasure not to no longer be distracted by my wife’s phone conversations or reality TV obsession.

While I still need to figure out where to put my desk, how to set up the computer and how to optimize Feng Shui, first I need to decide what color to paint it.

RED is out because it can raise blood pressure, create heat and stimulate anger and rage.

ORANGE is optimistic, but too much can cause frustration and irritability. And I’ve got enough of that to go around.

YELLOW is said to stimulate the brain and increase one’s thirst for knowledge. I like the way that sounds, but I simply don’t love yellow.

GREEN is both refreshing and cleansing, bringing about calmness. Sounds good. But this sustainability-mania is forcing the color down all of our throats.

BLUE can be peaceful or depressing, depending on the shade. It can help anxiety and reduce the volume of phlegm. Bonus!

PURPLE can have a spiritual effect. But God probably doesn’t care what color I paint the office.

What color is your blogging location and what color do you think I should go with?

After researching all of these colors, I’m back to white!

Side effects may include runny nose, itchy scalp, bloody stool…

Over the past few weeks the majority of my time has been consumed with the purchase of a new house. Both stressful and exhilarating, the process has left me with precious few minutes to attend to my blogging duties - both paid and unpaid. Each night, despite my home-buying excitement, there was a dull nagging. A sort of gnawing at my soul. The culprit? My lack of blog production.

Like a rapidly-growing tumor, blogging has become part of who I am; like it or not.

Don’t get me wrong, I can still delineate between an Internet-free life event (Wedding, funeral, family birthday, etc.), but withdrawing from the activity that has become such an integral part of my life, has become a bit of a challenge.

My guess is that us bloggers share many of the same characteristics and personality traits. Aside from the obvious love of the written (typed) word, we tend to be fastidious by nature, a little obsessive and a tad introverted. So I need to know…

HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN YOU ARE UNABLE TO BLOG?

Hopefully you don’t need methadone to alleviate your shakes. Or has it gotten that bad?

I hate hyperbole, and what really infuriates me are claims that “there is nothing like this anywhere!” Oh, really.

With the modern treasure trove called search engines, there is little left in the world that can’t be found, and odds are that your original, can’t be found anywhere, is findable. Have you looked?

A few months ago, a WordPress Plugin author claimed that he had the first Plugin of this kind. I knew of three others published over the past few years that did the same thing, and two did it better. I didn’t need a search engine to find that out, but why didn’t he search first before making the claim?

A day later, a WordPress Theme designer told me that he’d designed a Theme that was such an original, he bet me I couldn’t find anything similar. I found over twenty five similar Themes with a Google search before calling it quits.

Another blogger bragged to me that he was going to hold a contest unlike any other contest. No one in the world had ever done anything like it. When I told him that two similar contests were held over the past couple years exactly like his, one was a success and the other a failure, he was really angry at me for taking the wind out of his sails. I wished him good luck anyway. Maybe his would work, but bragging about it as the “only one of its kind” isn’t the truth. read more

Want to put either WordPress or Movable Type to good sue as a traditional CMS? There are two posts about this on Devlounge that you really should read:

• Things to Consider When Using Movable Type as a CMS by Billy Mabray
• Things To Consider When Using WordPress as a CMS by Thord Daniel Hedengren

Yes, the latter one is written by me, and a while back at that, but it is interesting in comparison with Billy’s more recent post.

Save us from the out-of-control blogrolls, lists of links that run on and on and on and on and on and on and on…listing everyone who ever started a blog on the whole planet - well, it feels like it.

Your blogroll links are important in the minds of Google, and they can add or subtract points in your PageRank scores. You better take your blogroll links seriously, ensuring you are linking to blogs that will complement yours as well as complement theirs.

As part of this ongoing series on WTF Blog Design Clutter, let’s take a look at how we are abusing and misusing our blog’s blogrolls. read more

While attending the How to Hire a Professional Blogger For Your Business session at Blog World Expo, it was very interesting to learn that you have to know your performance numbers and how they work in order to really understand what it takes to make money as a hired blogger.

As part of this series on what you need to know about hiring a professional blogger and being hired, let’s look at what the pros had to say about performance numbers and metrics and what you need to know before you go pro.

Gregory Go of About.com Guide to Online Business made it clear to the crowded room about how the numbers drive payment and drives success when it comes to paying a blogger. “If you are looking to make money blogging for a company or blog network, you have to understand the metrics.”

Gregory listed three key web analytics that should be used to set a price for paying a blogger.

1. Consistency - Word Count Metric: Number of posts per week or month published with a minimum word count per post.
2. Internal Metrics: Numbers based upon direct interaction and actions such as comment count, feed or newsletter subscribers, and direct sales generated.
3. External Metrics: Performance compared to the general Internet/blogosphere metrics. This includes page view counts and referrer or inbound links.

While few pay solely based upon one of these three metrics, most blogs and blog networks compensate bloggers based upon a combination of these numbers. read more