Clear Blogging out - free chapter.

My new book, Clear Blogging, started selling at Amazon yesterday and Apress has just made available Chapter 9 ("Successful Blogging") as a .pdf. Just look on the books Apress page under Extras (direct link here).

One of the main themes I built into this book are ways of being more productive and more time efficient as a blogger. Chapter 9 is basically a mini blogging course on:

• Ways of finding things to post on (creating "beats", using Google as your Blog Radar).
• Structuring your blog (theming your blog, maintaining a story list, accessorizing longer posts, 22 ideas that will make or break your blog).
• Tools and methods for improving your writing (handy bookmarklets, WhiteSmoke, How to write a compelling post by B.L. Ochman, How to write a blog post, by Seth Godin).
• The ins and outs of Technorati tagging (covered elsewhere in Clear Blogging in much, much more detail, including an interview with Technorati CEO David Sifry).
• Socializing your blog (Digg, Reddit and Sociable).

If you're a blogger, I hope you'll find this free chapter (and the book :) ) useful, informative and above all else information you can take action with. Enjoy!

Comments

[Bob Walsh]

Hi Chris -

Google has changed things around. If you want to add the results of a Google Blog Search, click the RSS Link, pick Google from the list of rss readers and then choose Add to Google Homepage.

For non-google feeds, click on the Add Stuff link on the iGoogle page header, then look for the add RSS link at the bottom of the lefthand column.

Hope this helps!

[Chris]

It was with interest that I purchased your book Clear Blogging. On page 179-82 you listed a way to set up a Tab called Radar. I tried to follow your instructions, but found that Google doesn't have a "Add by URL" link next to their Search Homepage Content button. I did a Google Search for more information and found that Google's instructions were similar to what you had written. The only problem is that the "Add by URL" is missing. Can you assist me with this problem?
Thanks. I like your book.
Chris