Thank you to everyone (writers and readers alike) who participated in 6 Weeks to a Better Blog! I can’t believe how fast it went by. Now is the time for the most important part of every project, looking back to see what we accomplished and learned. Did your blog get the kick in the pants in needed? What did you learn? Was there anything we missed? I’ll be happy to hold on to your questions for future Nerd Q & A posts.

In case you missed any of the posts, here they are…

Finding your blogging voice: Melissa from Bubby & Bean

Keeping your post style consistent: Cassie from The Veda House

Connecting with your audience: Sarah from Yes and Yes

Being open and brave online: Moorea Seal

Being open and brave online: Angie from Lariats and Lavender

Being open and brave online: Amy from A is for Ampersand

How to create and add a blog button

Being a little too inspired by other bloggers

Taking better outfit photos: Kelli Murray and Amanda from Indie Jane Photography

How to add a Gravatar

Collaborating with other bloggers: Elycia from Love Elycia

Dealing with haters: Elizabeth from Delightfully Tacky

How to remove the navbar in Blogger

When to add sponsors: Kate from Scathingly Brilliant

Creating a sponsorship program: Kyla Roma

Promoting your shop on your blog: Susannah Bean

Using your blog to promote your indie business: Sandi from Adalou Vintage

Organizing your blog posts in your sidebar

Shooting a DIY post: Dana from Wonder Forest

Taking delicious food photos: Jess from Tenpenny Splendid

Wow that’s a lot of awesome advice!

I’m sad to say, 6 Weeks to a Better Blog has come to an end, but I’m happy that the last post is coming from Jess of Tenpenny Splendid. I’ve been drooling over her recipes and photos for months now, so she’s here to help your photos go from ‘hmmm…’ to ‘Mmmmm!’ (yes, I did just write that completely cheesy sentence :p)

I am in no way a professional photographer but these are some tricks and tips I’ve picked up along the way that work for me!

1. The first thing to consider is lighting. The better the lighting, the less photo editing you’ll have to do. Your best bet at getting great food photos, as with any photos, is to use the sun! When I know I want to shoot a recipe, I always try to plan it for morning or afternoon. My kitchen table is right next to a big window so I turn off all the lights, open the curtains all the way, and shoot. Sometimes the photos turn out a little darker than I’d like but you can easily brighten them up afterward in Photoshop. Of course, things happen and I’m not always able to shoot a recipe during the day and have to give in and just do it at night. That brings me to the next tip!

2. White balance. I’ve only ever used Photoshop so I can’t really speak for free programs out there, but if you can’t use natural light, white balancing is your next best bet. The camera I use shoots raw so a handy little tool appears when I open the file in Photoshop that will auto-white balance for you, but it can be done by hand too. Most likely if you shoot in a kitchen at night, your photos will be crazy yellow. Open the color balance tool and play with the sliders. Usually adding blue and taking out some magenta will do the trick. If your photo is a little dark, instead of messing with the brightness, open up the levels tool. Drag the slider at the far right over to the left slightly until it looks bright but not blown out.

3. There are also some less technical things you can do to make your photos look better! The first one is to eliminate background clutter. If you’re shooting a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, no one should be able to see a bag of chips, your dirty dishes, some trash, whatever has accumulated on your kitchen counter throughout the week, *especially* if these things are in focus. We all have messy kitchens and most bloggers don’t clean a room from floor to ceiling before shooting. They tidy up the small area they’re shooting or at the very least crop out the mess! When I see photos with all that stuff in the background, I’m thinking less about the recipe and more about the fact that I also have dirty dishes to deal with in the other room. ;)

4. Props can also add a little something to your photos. I’m not an expert on this as I don’t have the funds right now to buy the adorable little plates, cake stands, boards, and bowls that I’d love to have one day, but I often just use what I have to try and make a photo more interesting. For example, if the recipe has to do with fruit, I’ll position a fruit bowl so it can be seen in the background, or I’ll even just position whatever I’m working with, like measuring cups and spoons, to make a more interesting photo. If you want to see some seriously cute food props though, check out this post from Joy the Baker.

5. Finally, seeing something from different angles is always more interesting than just one straight on shot. Get down next to the food and shoot it from the side. Take some onto a spoon and shoot a close up. Detail shots add a lot of interest to a post. Think about outfit posts.. most bloggers shoot their full outfit and then do close ups of the finer details like shoes and jewelry. The same applies to food photography!

Thank you Jess!

Now it’s your turn…

I can’t believe we’re already in week 6! Just a few more posts left! We’ve talked about shooting outfit photos and today Dana is here from Wonder Forest with her tips on shooting a DIY project.

+ When photographing your DIY project, it’s important to show the little details. Snap photos every step of the way as you create. Show the viewer what you’re doing, and what it should look like as you’re doing it. You don’t have to necessarily use all of the photos in your final tutorial post, but it’s better to have too many than not enough!

+  If you have a nice camera, that always helps, but isn’t necessary. You can use a point and shoot and get nice results, just make sure that your area is well lit, and don’t use your flash!  Natural lighting is the best ;)

+ Use your hand! I say hand and not hands because one hand obviously has to control the camera if you’re not using a timer. Sometimes it can be difficult, but try to demonstrate what you’re doing with your hands. For example, in this second photo I am tracing a line with a pencil in my right hand.  I would normally snap the photo with that hand, but for the tutorial’s sake I awkwardly reached around and pressed the button with my left hand. Strange, yes, but without my hand there you wouldn’t know I was tracing anything. Alternatively I could have pretended I am left handed and stuck the pencil in that hand.

+ Finally, choose your photos wisely. No one needs to see 5 different photos of one DIY step. Just the important ones will do!

Thank you Dana!

< <  Last Post: Organizing posts in your sidebar + Next Post: Blog design tip > >

If you write 20 percent of your posts on cake decorating, make sure the cake decorating category and your best Hunger Games-themed cake are easy to locate in your sidebar!

Here are six well organized sidebars from six of my favorite bloggers…

Allison features links to four series she regularly posts about with simple, bright buttons.

Katie uses post titles with photos that link to four recent posts. Not the most recent posts on her blog though, she picks four specific posts to be featured.

Becka lists the top three categories, which helps readers know exactly what her blog is about. She also has three photo buttons that link to blog features and important posts.

Virginie added eye-catching photos with titles for her most-used labels.

 Zoetica adds the most recent post from three categories (latest art, latest photo and latest outfit) with a photo and title.

Kathleen links to three regular series, posts from her trek to Everest, and info on her business all in the same style with a little description of each.

+ Choose only a few items to feature. Posts/categories/series that get the most traffic, searching engine hits, comments and shares, or posts that you just straight up LOVE.

+ Keep a consistent style. Categories, series and favorite posts could all look the same, but each with its own color.

+ If you don’t have automatically rotating content, update your sidebar on a regular basis. I try to tweak mine every two or three months.

< <  Last Post: Using your blog to promote your business + Next Post: Shooting a DIY project  > >

Hello SillyGrrl friends, I’m Sandi, and I’m thrilled to be here today joining in for the 6 weeks to a Better Blog Series, thanks so much Sarah for having me. I’m a blogger and a handmade artist and I run a little shop called Benandi over on Etsy. I’m here today to share how I’ve used my blog to help promote my little shop.

Firstly, I never want to force or push people to buy my products; that’s just not me. If they do care to purchase something, I am so appreciative of their support. In a round about way I do however use my blog to help promote my shops. My blog is my creative space where I already share with the world what I’m up to or what inspires me on a daily basis, so featuring my products only makes sense. For me it’s more of a shameless promotion tool where I don’t feel the need to say “buy this” but more or less “hey this is what I’m up to, I hope you enjoy it, and if you want to know more you can find about it here”. There’s no hiding it that blogs are used as a tool in one way or another, but it’s truly how you use your space and what you chose to share which can make all the difference.

My biggest pieces of advice would be “Don’t abuse your blog!”. People (and myself included) hate seeing sites filled with “buy this, buy that” stamped all over the pages. It’s annoying and hard on your eyes to look at. From time to time if you do this in moderations it may fly but overdoing it will surely call for sour faces for everyone involved. People are so sweet and usually very supportive of your creative side and as long as you don’t make them feel pressured into always buying things.

Offering giveaways of your products though, this puts a smile on everyones face. We all love to win something, I know I do. Being able to offer items up for a giveaway, helps me to express to my readers that I am so appreciative of all their continued support and thank you so much for this. With free giveaways, in the end, everyone seems so much more happy. I love knowing someone wanted the item I was offering up. And it’s a great feeling knowing your work is appreciated and the winner is usually over ecstatic with their free goodies. Well I hope some of this advice helps you move forth in a positive manor with promoting your small business via your blog. Thanks, Good Luck & Happy Blogging. :)

Thanks for your advice Sandi!!

< <  Last Post: Susannah on promoting your shop online + Next Post: Blog design tip  > >

Hello everyone! I’m excited to share a few tips with you for Sarah’s 6 Weeks series, and I’d like to send a big thank you to her for including me! My name is Susannah, and I blog over at SusannahBean.com. I also have an Etsy shop where I sell crocheted accessories that I make in my free time. I’m a huge advocate of using your blog to promote your shop, so here are some awesome things I like about doing that!

One thing that’s awesome about using your blog to promote your shop is that it forges a personal connection between your readers (and potential customers) and you, the blogger (and seller). I personally enjoy knowing something about the person I’m buying from, I don’t like feeling like I’m buying from some faceless internet shop, and I’d rather know the seller’s name and a little bit of who they are. So if people find your blog first, they’ll get to know you on a personal level and will feel connected to you, which usually means you’ll be on the top of their list if they need what you sell. No one ever says “Hey! I need to buy such and such product, I’m gonna shop at internetdrone404′s shop!” No, they say “Hey! That rad blogger sells such and such, I like her and feel like supporting her craft!”

Another great thing about using your blog to promote your shop is that it gives you the opportunity to reach a wider audience than you would solely through Etsy. Say you’re doing a giveaway of one of your items from your shop. Your blog readers can enter, and maybe they blog about it or tweet a link to it, then more people will come check it out. Some of those people may not have heard of you before, or they may not have even known a product like yours existed! But by utilizing the ripple effect of the blogging world, you are giving more people the opportunity to fall in love with your product and become potential customers! You should also utilize the friendships you make with other bloggers. Have you encountered someone who might have a different audience than you? Politely ask them if they’d like to review one of your products! It never hurts to send away something for free if it could mean a new crop of customers who didn’t know about you before.

It can be tricky to not overwhelm your readers with shop announcements and the like. You don’t want your blog to become a billboard for your shop, because your readers will pick up on that in a millisecond and no one likes that. You wouldn’t want to only watch commercials on TV, right? But it’s cool if there’s a few during your fave show. Your blog should be the same way! Don’t flood your followers with shop stuff on your blog (or Twitter, Facebook, etc.). If you’re jazzed about a new design you came up with, or if you’re offering a coupon code, feel free to share it in moderation, but don’t go all “SALE!!! SALE!!! SALE!!!” on every social media site a hundred times a day. It can get annoying, and I personally avoid buying from people who do that!

I hope you can find something useful in my tips! I’ve really found that these things are helpful, and I learn something new about this little world every day! Be patient and personable, and it’ll make all the difference!

Thank you Susannah!

< <  Last Post: Adding a sponsorship program + Next Post: Sandi talks about promoting your shop > >

 Today’s post is about a recent trend in the blog world. I’ve been writing online in some form or another since middle school (a very long time ago!) and only in the past few year have sponsors become something that bloggers strive to have. Today Kate is here from Scathingly Brilliant to talk about when to add sponsors and how to figure out pricing.

1. Make sure your prices are fair. Check other blogs with the same followers & traffic that you have to make sure you aren’t underselling them or overpricing.

2. Don’t start accepting sponsors until you have enough of a readership that your sponsors will actually benefit from the deal. I didn’t accept them until I had I think 500 followers and even then I felt uneasy charging any more than $5. If you want to have sponsors but don’t have a sufficient amount of readers to charge for it, offer trade space! The payment for an ad on your blog is that the other person puts your ad on their blog in exchange.

3. Keep a spreadsheet with all of your sponsor information in one place. It took me months to finally start doing this but it’s made a huge difference. I have columns for name, business/blog name, email address, URL, image URL (I keep all of my sponsor images on Photobucket), expiration date and size. I also have columns to check off whether they paid, whether they sent their ad, and whether I have the ad up and running. It makes the whole process run so much smoother for me now! And I just use Google docs, which is free and I love that I can access it from my home computer or my laptop :)

Thanks Kate! I second the recommendation on keeping a spreadsheet – Google docs makes it very easy to keep track of everything :)

< <  Last Post: Kyla on adding sponsors + Next Post: Using your blog to promote your business > >

I’m Kyla Roma, a twenty something web designer, friendly introvert, thrifting addict and vegetarian foodie. I’m the co-owner and managing director of Freckled Nest Design, and I blog weekly about my life, good food, and handmade that makes me swoon at KylaRoma.com.

Adding sponsors to your blog is a big trend online right now and if you want to jump in it can be hard to know where to start. I’ve had an advertising program on my blog for over two years (that I just decided to end) and in my work with Freckled Nest I’m part of the team that manages advertising for the successful parenting and handmade blogs, Smile and Wave and Prudent Baby. I also spent the last few years of my nine to five life in marketing and have managed six figure media buys in print, radio, television and online for national theatre tours and high profile bands.

And for the record, bloggers are way more fun to work for with than radio stations and musicians!

I’m here to share some of my tips and thoughts on adding sponsorship to your blog, and I would love to hear your thoughts, questions and experiences in the comments below!

What’s Right for You?

Before you add sponsorship to your blog, it’s important to take a step back and ask if it’s right for you. While sponsored blogs are a hot trend and might help your blog feel official, running a sponsorship program requires your time, energy and usually some basic graphic design skills for those sponsors without a perfectly sized ad.

As well, with sponsorship comes responsibility: you need to be committed to blogging frequently, should avoid topics that conflict with the interests of your sponsors, and will have to watch your statistics more carefully. That being said, if you have the time, a blog that aligns with small or medium businesses, and consistent high quality content, sponsorship could be a great move for you!

Choosing a Your Program & Being a Fair Blogger

It’s important to understand the trends in your corner of the internet, and with blogger run programs growing there are lots of options available to you. You could join a large program that matches you with sponsors based on your statistics and content, like Blog Her, Federated Media or Six Apart. For a more hands on approach, you can run your own program by accepting payment through Paypal or use a new hybrid service like PassionFruit. Most small bloggers are choosing the latter options because it lets them capture more profit than a traditional ad service. Woo Hoo! There’s nothing wrong with getting paid :)

What can be a problem is that because sponsorship is a trend and the deals happen behind closed doors, things aren’t always what they seem. Bloggers without the audience to naturally support a program will add excessive trades in slow months, and may only have a handful of paying participants. Without statistics and an engaged community it’s hard to get value for your advertising dollars- which is usually scarce for small business owners.

On the other side of the same coin, many companies have seen the impact of social media but created huge cookie cutter programs that don’t allow for individuality or personality. After seeing the same sponsor run the same promotion on dozens of blogs, it’s no wonder that readers get burned out on sponsored posts.

Both of these approaches give blog sponsorship a reputation for being tolerable at best and impersonal at worst- and it can lead to cynical readers who can’t wait for everyone’s end of the month sponsorship drives to pass. But for all our creativity, why not imagine ways that sponsorship could be impactful for businesses and fun for your readers?

Imagine Your Possibilities

Before you create a sidebar advertising program and blend in with the crowd, it’s worth considering if that’s the best way for you to work with sponsors in the first place. After all, your blog is a unique place filled with people who you’ve drawn in with your creativity and personality- why shouldn’t your sponsorship be tailor made too?

Consider these alternatives:

- What if you held an annual sponsorship drive to cover the cost of your hosting, domain name, and paid accounts associated with your blog to make your blog cost neutral? (This is what my program started out as!)

- What if your blog just had one featured sponsor per month, and they offered an exclusive giveaway that benefited your readers?

- What if you decided that you wanted to have featured handmade sellers or bloggers ever month that you hand picked and gifted ad space to?

- What if you had no sidebar ads but offered a newsletter that was specifically for people who wanted to get amazing discounts or free product from high quality sponsors you personally approve?

- What if you only had a product sponsor for important aspects of your content, like a fashion blogger working with one watch company for a year or a crafty blogger who has a dedicated fabric sponsor?

The right decision depends on why you’re exploring working with sponsors, but by thinking about your site as the unique space that it is you can create creating customized opportunities that sponsors will love and readers can look forward to.

By taking that extra time and care you’ll send out a strong message: that your audience can trust you, sponsors can count on you, and that your creativity & fabulousness extends way beyond your post ideas :)

Thank you Kyla for your insight and advice!

So now the question is, to add sponsors or not to add sponsors? If you already have a sponsorship program – how do you run things and is there anything you’d do differently after reading Kyla’s advice? Are any of you thinking of adding sponsors or, like me, are you opting out?

< <  Last Post: How to remove the Blogger navbar + Next Post: Kate shares her advice for adding sponsors  > >

One of the quickest, most simple ways to clean up your Blogger layout is to get rid of that ugly blue navbar at the top. It matches almost no one’s design and isn’t terribly functional. Here are two options for fixing that eyesore…

1. If you use the navbar on a regular basis, you can change the color. Click into the layout tab and then look for the little navbar edit link at the top. Choose a color that  matches your design. I like to make it transparent, so it goes with everything.

2. If you never use it, then you can remove the navbar all together. Click into the HTML editor under Template and paste the following code right above the variable definitions:

#navbar-iframe { display: none !important;}

Easy peasy!

< <  Last Post: Dealing with haters + Next Post: Setting up sponsors  > >

Today Elizabeth from Delightfully Tacky is here to talk about one of the negative parts of blogging – haters. You get enough readers and inevitably, generally for no reason at all, you’ll end up with someone leaving nasty comments. It’s unfortunate and sad that anyone would leave a rude comment, but it happens, so here’s Elizabeth with some ideas on how to handle it.

1. Determine if they’re just crazy trolls who have nothing of value to say, or if they actually have a good point and maybe just said it in a really mean or rude way.

2. Figure out the healthiest way for you (YOU, not another blogger. Everyone is different in how they can handle/deal with these comments) to deal with mean comments. Maybe you have a policy where you just immediately delete them and don’t acknowledge them at all. Maybe you moderate all your comments before they get published. Maybe you just leave them up. Decide how you feel it’s most healthy for you to deal with them.

3. It’s YOUR blog. You don’t have to allow mean comments if you don’t want to. If people tell you that “you can’t take the heat,” just ignore them. It’s a deeply personal decision. I personally decide on a case by case basis whether or not to delete a mean comment. If it’s just totally ridiculous and pointless, or if it’s attacking another commenter, or just plain offensive, I’ll probably delete it. If they’re (rudely) trying to point out something or start a discussion, I might reply. Sometimes people just miss-read or didn’t understand what I was saying, and it’s easy enough to correct their misunderstanding

4. Don’t internalize mean commenters’ statements. Just because someone tells you something, that doesn’t make it true. I’ve had people tell me I’m ugly, I’m boring, my photos are awful, I’m codependent now that I’m married, etc etc. But those things aren’t true, and believing and internalizing them will only cripple my ability to be who I truly am.

5. RE: #4 – recognize that those people don’t know you. The opinions about you which matter are the opinions of those closest to you, which probably won’t end up being your blog commenters. The opinions that matter most to me are those of my best friends, my family, my husband. If they were to make a criticism about me, I would take it seriously because they know me through and through. By and large, blog readers only get a very small snippet of your life and who you are.

6. Think about the ratio of uplifting to rude comments. Chances are, your comments are probably 99% uplifting and positive and 1% rude, mean, and critical. If you look at it that way, the most likely scenario is that someone just doesn’t “get” you, or they’re just having a terrible day and have decided to take it out on you randomly. We focus so much on mean comments because they take us so much by surprise, but go back and look through all the beautiful, positive comments you get– that’s what matters.

7. Haters gonna hate. I don’t get it either, but there are some people out there who just want to spread hate. Their mean comments say more about their unhappiness and jealousy than they do about you and your blog.

Thank you Elizabeth for sharing your advice!
Have any of you had the pleasure of someone leaving a rude comment on your blog? How did you deal with it – just delete and ignore or try and reason with them?

< <  Last Post: Collaborating with other bloggers + Next Post: Removing the Navbar in Blogger  > >