One of the great things about blogging is that it is very accessible to anyone with internet access. There are some fantastic tools around that are completely free that mean you can have a blog up and running within minutes of deciding to start a blog.

Free tools range from hosted blog platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger through to a myriad of plugins and themes around the web that can make blogging a breeze.

Of course while there are many many free options out there, sometimes to take your blog to the next level there can come a time when you need to spend a few dollars. I bit the bullet early in my blogging and did this first by paying for my own hosting and moving from Blogger to Movable Type (and later to WordPress.org). I also paid fairly early on for a custom design.

These days I continue to have a variety of expenses including hosting, design, paying a small team of writers (on dPS), paying for some admin support and some development costs.

There are also a number of paid tools that have become indispensable for me which I’d like to feature today. While there are free alternatives to some of them, I’ve found them to be of a standard that I’m more than happy to pay for.

1. Aweber

Perhaps the single most important decision that I’ve made in the last few years of blogging was to add newsletters to my blogs (particularly my photography blog).

I’ve outlined how I use newsletters to drive significant traffic and make money and have written previously Why I use Aweber so won’t rehash it all again – but this is a tool I’m more than happy to have invested in as it easily pays for itself and has been a key part of growing my blogs over the last 4 years many times over.

2. Ustream Producer Pro

This is the latest tool that I’ve invested in. It wasn’t particularly cheap at $199 but enables me to take my video streaming sessions up a notch and do things like have more than one camera angle, do live screen capturing, add a logo to my ustream sessions, import movies and audio into them, have extra transitions, do picture in picture etc.

Some of this is in the free version and you might find you don’t need to upgrade unless you want a few more bells and whistles.

3. MindNode Pro

I’m a big fan of mind mapping. I used to do it without having a name for it on whiteboards and note pads but when I saw online tools that could help me with it I was in heaven. I’ve tried a lot of the Mac based tools (both free and paid) and the one that suits my workflow best is MindNode.

Their free version is brilliant and you might not even need to upgrade but I’m willing to pay for the Pro version simply because it adds the ability to fold down sections of your mind map and do things like add images to it.

4. Market Samurai

I’ve not ever really paid money for SEO before until I came across the Market Samurai tool but it’s excellent. I may not use it quite to its fullest potential (yet) but have touched on how I find it useful for choosing a niche to blog about as well as optimizing a single post on your blog for search engines.

The cool thing is that they have a free trial of the tool which will give you access to its great features to try before you buy – you might find that that’s all you need to do some research and get your blog optimised pretty well.

5. Screenflow

This is a mac only tool which allows users to do great screencasting. I’ve used it more for private resources that I’ve developed for a couple of companies in consulting but it is a very cool way to show what’s on your screen in video as well as insert a view from a camera. A few videos I’ve made with it include -  

• How Leaving Comments on Blogs Can Drive Traffic to Yours
• How I Use Social Media to Promote my blogs
• How to Use Google’s Wonder Wheel to find topics to Write about

Note: I am an affiliate for Market Samurai and Aweber but am both a user and a fan of both.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

5 Tools I Am Willing to Pay for [And Recommend] to Improve My Blogs

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Every week I am contacted by people producing training resources, courses, eBooks, books etc for people wanting to make money from blogging and other online activities.

If I were to write a post about every one it’d almost take over this blog completely so I’m pretty fussy about which ones I promote. However lately there have been a lot of them coming from people that I know and respect.

Not all will be ideal for every person (they have a huge variation in price points and a fair variation in topics covered) but I do know that some are going to be very valuable to different readers so here’s a summary of the latest products coming across my desk (in no particular order).

1. Freelancer’s Survival Guide

Chris Guillebeau has done it again with another of his ‘Unconventional Guides’ (out today).

This one is for those wanting to get serious about their Freelancing Businesses. As with most of these guides Chris offers 3 price points for different levels.

Learn more about this Freelancing Survival Guide Here.

2. Beyond Blogging Project

A brand new project by Nathan Hagan and Mike CJ – authors of the successful Beyond Blogging book.

This project is a 6 months project to help you build your blog to the next level.

It includes web casts, podcasts, site critiques, Q&A calls, forum and a lot more. Both Mike and Nathan know what they’re doing – looks like something well worth considering. It’s not cheap and will price some out of participating (although not as expensive as some courses) but for a 6 month course with lots of personal touches it’s about what I’d expect.

Get all the information on the Beyond Blogging Project here

3. Product Launch Formula 3

Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 3 has had enough buzz in the last week that you’d have to have been having an internet free week to miss it.

It’s a high level product for those looking to launch products (I took version 2 and it’s helped me double my income from product sales in the last year) and it closes its doors in the next 24 hours (Jeff tends to only open them every 6-12 months).

Again – this isn’t a cheap product but it’s the formula behind many very successful online product launches so if you’re getting into that game it’s the type of teaching that has the potential to pay for itself. At the very least get yourself signed up for the product launch formula blueprint (pdf and video) which is free (for the the price of an email address) as it’s a handy thing to have.

Learn more about it in this interview I did last week with Jeff.

Full Details on Product Launch Formula 3 are Here

4. Engage

This is a book (yep, a paper one) that I’ve been reading for a month now. I usually don’t read too many paper books these days but this one is well worth the read.

The sub title is – ‘The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web‘ which gives you a little more on what it is about but as a mini review I’d say it’s well worth the read for anyone whose business is developing a plan for their use of social media. Much of it is useful for individuals but I suspect it’s going to be most powerful when a company gets ahold of it and implements some of Brian’s thinking in their business.

The first half is more introductory into the world of social media while the 2nd half is more about how to use social media to engage and some of the responsibilities that come with that. It’s a meaty book – enjoy.

Engage is Available on Amazon here

Disclaimer – each and every one of the links above is an affiliate link and you can assume that I stand to earn a comission if you buy any of the products. However I stand by the recommendations of the products and people mentioned. For every product mention you see here there’s another 1-2 that I’ve chosen not to include.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

4 Resources to Build Your Blogging Business

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The computational knowledge engine, Wolfram Alpha, is continuing to fascinate many. WebProNews spoke with Barak Berkowitz and Schoeller Porter both of Wolfram Alpha to understand more about how the engine works and where it could be headed.

At the time of the taping of this interview, Berkowitz had been with the company for only a matter of days. He has been in the tech industry for 30 years and his resume includes early search engine Infoseek and more recently the social platform Six Apart.

Based on his experience, he has noticed that, with technology, people have the power to do things that they never thought were possible.  Berkowitz tells WPN he sees that same “powering factor” in Wolfram Alpha since people have not previously had access to the facts and calculations the engine provides.

Many people have wondered where Wolfram Alpha fits in regards to the other search engines. As Berkowitz explains, people look at search engines to find information on the Web. He says Wolfram Alpha creates facts.

The engine is already embracing social media with location and customization aspects. Over time, Berkowitz says the engine will include more social features that are relevant to user needs. Porter also points out that the engine wants users to be able to easily share Wolfram Alpha information with their friends.

Wolfram Alpha has partnered with Bing and Berkowitz indicates that the engine would like to be integrated everywhere people go for information. He also believes that the factual information Wolfram Alpha provides is the next level of search.

Today I’m pleased to announce the launch of the 2nd Edition of ProBlogger the Book! It’s a book designed to help you take your blog to the next level – so make sure you grab a copy today.

Chris Garrett and myself put together the first edition of ProBlogger the book back in 2008 with the goal of putting together a resource for bloggers that would walk them through many of the aspects of setting up and growing of a profitable new blog.

Between us we’d written literally thousands of tips and tutorials on our blogs about blogging – but a book put the best of them together in a logical order and in a way that a blogger could take and set up a blog.

Since that time it’s been used by many many thousands of bloggers.

Time for an Updated Edition

However 2 years is a long time in blogging and so it was time for an updated version – hence when Wiley asked us to do a 2nd edition we were only too pleased to do so.

This is an update of the 1st edition and not a complete rewrite – however there are a few significant updates including:

• there have been many many small updates and changes throughout the book. New examples, screenshots, updates of new tools, a few deletions of references to old tools, an update to our stories in the intro etc.
• we’ve removed a chapter on blog networks – things have changed a lot in this space and many networks are not hiring any more or have changed their models significantly.
• Chris has added a significant chapter on social media and how it impacts and can be used by bloggers
• I have added a case study chapter that goes through the first 4 years of my main blog – Digital Photography School. I work through how I launched it, what I focused upon in years 1-2 and then in years 3-4, how I monetize it and share the secrets to how I drive significant traffic and income through email newsletters, social media etc.
• Bonuses – we’re offering anyone who buys the book a series of bonuses (some interviews with successful bloggers, some extra teaching etc)

Grab Your Copy Today

The update brings the book into the new decade and we’re excited to see people’s reactions to it.

If you’re going to grab your copy – make sure you do so today because when the first edition was released it sold out pretty quickly and it was a week or two before more copies were available! Amazon have it on sale at 34% off.

PS: this 2nd edition will be available on Kindle in just a few days – you can pre-order your kindle version here.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

ProBlogger the Book 2nd Edition – Available Today!

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Today I read a great post by Chris Brogan titled Success is Made of Little Victories (image by lintmachine).

“Everything we do to be successful comes from little victories. When someone takes notice of our success, it looks like something big. It feels like one big moment. But always, and I mean always, it comes from a series of little victories. Look at the successes you’ve had. Did they all come at once? Or did you build up from nowhere to somewhere to somewhere better to a quick fallback to a new success, and then pow? Right.”

Chris isn’t writing specifically about blogging with the rest of his post – but he’s describing what I’ve heard many successful bloggers talk about when they look back on how they’ve grow their blogs.

The Victories in the early days of blogging are often very ‘little’:

• getting your blog set up
• writing your first post (and overcoming the ‘this is weird’ feeling)
• getting your first comment (usually from a friend)
• getting your first comment from a stranger
• being linked to by another blogger

These victories may indeed be ‘little’ – but they each are significant and can (and do) lead to growth, opportunity and ultimately bigger victories.

The Toughest Question I Get Asked

I am often asked about the ‘tipping point’ in my blogging – that moment where something happened where my blog went to the next level.

The problem with this question is that there was no such moment for me. I’ve no doubt that other bloggers will identify key events that ‘tipped’ their blog in terms of success – but for me it’s been much more of an evolution or chain of events – a series of little victories if you like.

The key for me has been in using the victories to build momentum towards the next victory rather than seeing them as an end point.

The Key is to Use the Little Victories to Create Momentum

Over the years I’ve learned that each time I have a ‘little victory’ that I need to look for how that victory might be used to propel me forward towards the next one.

This might sound a little ‘new age’ but the way I see it is that victories create ‘energy’. When we have them we as bloggers feel energised and inspired but other opportunities often open up which can be taken advantage of to spring to the next level.

An Example – I remember the feelings associated with the first time I was mentioned in mainstream media. A citywide newspaper here in Melbourne ran a short spot (and it was only 30-40 words) in their tech section about my blog (it was a ‘blog of the week’ type column – a tiny screenshot, the link and a few words).

Despite the smallness of the spot I was completely over the moon with the mention – it was something I could show my parents (to prove I wasn’t a complete lunatic for spending all my time blogging) and it just made me feel good to get that kind of acknowledgement. I was energised and inspired and it gave me a personal boost of momentum to keep growing my blog – however it also created a number of other opportunities.

Here’s what followed:

• I emailed the journalist to thank him for the mention and to offer any help if he ever needed the opinion of a blogger. This in itself led to being quoted in 5-6 future articles and in the long term a longer feature article about my blog.
• I used that small mention in the newspaper to reach out to a radio station where I was in the next week interviewed about my blogging.
• A couple of months later I was approached by someone who had heard the radio interview to speak at a local conference.
• I used speaking at that conference as an example of what I could do when pitching an overseas conference organiser – this turned into my first paid speaking gig.
• At that event (in the US) I met 3-4 bloggers who I’ve either entered into partnerships with, employed or built fruitful relationships with.

I could continue to follow the sequence of events to other opportunities that came.

Some of the opportunities were things that came a little out of the blue (like someone who heard the radio spot ringing to ask about the conference) while others were more about me taking initiative (like me contacting the radio station) – however none of them would have happened without the first little victory.

The key is to celebrate your little victories but not to let the celebration of them get in the way of where you’re headed next.

An Anti-Example – a few years back I witnessed one blogger do the exact opposite of what I’m talking about. He’d built his blog up to be a fairly successful blog and was approached by another company who wanted to acquire it. He accepted the six figure offer and was quite naturally over the moon about it.

I remember chatting with him after the sale and him saying that he was going to take some time off before starting another project. I wondered at the time whether it was a wise move. Sure he’d made some nice money from the sale but it wasn’t enough to set him up for life and I wondered whether there was opportunity in selling his blog to announce the next thing. The sale had created some great buzz and talk around the blogosphere – but he then went and took a year off.

When he came back to blogging with his next project the buzz had died down completely and all momentum that he’d had was gone. While I understand the need to take time off I wonder what would have happened if he’d announced the next project alongside the sale of his first blog – if the victory he’d had had been leveraged to bounce him toward the next victory.

Further Reading:

I’ve come back to this theme a number of times over the years. Back in 2007 I wrote about it for the first time in two posts – Blogs as Launching Pads (in which I shared my own sequence of launching projects from what I’d already built) and in How to Leverage Your Blog for bigger Things (some more ‘how to’ stuff).

Early this year I wrote Leverage What You Have and Take Your Blog to the Next Level as part of my Principles of Successful Blogging series.

What little victories have you had recently?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Success [In Blogging] Is Made of Little Victories

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At SXSW in Austin, Rob Millis and Will Coghlan launched their Dynamo Player. WebProNews caught up with both Millis and Coghlan to find out just how the player works.

As the two explain, the online video player has an integrated micropayment system that allows any producer, small or big, to upload content. The unique thing about this player is that it allows the content producers to set a price for their content and get paid immediately.

Up to this point, the primary revenue model for online content has been through advertising. But as Millis points out, this model does not work for all content. Both he and Coghlan believe now is the time to evolve to the next level, which is why they created their on-demand player.

The Dynamo Player is currently labeled as a distribution tool and can be embedded anywhere. Millis and Coghlan said they would eventually like to build a destination home for the player.

To learn more about the Dynamo Player and how you can sign up for the private beta, visit dynamoplayer.com.

Press Release: For Immediate Release
1 April 2010

MELBOURNE, Australia. (April 1, 2010) – ProBlogger, the web’s #1 Blog Tips site, today announced that it has been acquired by Google.

This acquisition will be a part of Googles extension of the ‘Blogger’ brand and a precursor to their new professional blogging suite of applications – ProBlogger.

“Blogging continues to grow in popularity, not only for personal use but by entrepreneurs and businesses around the world. Once seen as a ‘fools game’ – blogging has now grown up.” said a Google representative today. “Google’s new professional blogging suite, ProBlogger, will put an amazing array of tools into the hands those wanting to take their blogging to the next level.” said a Google representative today.

“What better brand to align these new tools with than ProBlogger, a blog that has consistently produced blog tips for professional bloggers for just under six years.”

“Some have called me a ‘fool’ for even considering selling ProBlogger,” said founder of ProBlogger Darren Rowse, “but I’d be a fool not to allow the ProBlogger brand to be developed by one of the world’s most innovative companies. I’m excited to see where Google will take ProBlogger going forward.”

The acquisition of ProBlogger will allow Darren to concentrate on his other projects including his main site – Digital Photography School – and an upcoming project – FoolsMedia.

Darren Rowse will remain a part of ProBlogger over the next 331 days where he plans to to begin a series of posts entitled ‘331 days to Build an Even Better Blog’ – a follow up to the successful 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

About ProBlogger

ProBlogger is a blog about blogging. Kinda sad really but not as sad as having a blog about Tweeting… or a book about blogging… that’d be sadder! ProBlogger was founded by Darren Rowse on September 23 2004. Since that time Darren has published 5,356 posts and the blog has received 178,448 comments. A Foolish endeavour? Maybe – but perhaps not as foolish as this press release!

Tags: April Fools

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

ProBlogger Acquired by Google

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The SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series is back with our latest installment, Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2!  Picking up where Volume 1 (now in it’s second printing) left off, Volume 2 is bigger, badder and loaded with 8 discs worth of training material to advance your SEO skills.

Intended for those seeking to learn high-level, scalable, enterprise SEO tactics and strategies to push their knowledge to the next level, this brand new series offers 14 all-new advanced presentations plus updated editions of two of the most popular modules from Volume 1.  Filmed live in London, UK before an international audience representing over a dozen countries, this series will teach you priceless SEO strategies that you can apply whether your audience is hyper-local or spans the globe.

 

 

Until Saturday, April 3rd, you can get Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2 for just $449 (that’s $150 off the regular price of $599) and we’ll include FREE Worldwide Shipping.  That’s less than 1/3 of what most industry conferences cost, and you can share this among your entire team (no travel expenses either).

Want to save even more?  SEOmoz PRO Members only pay $299 ($449 regularly). Do the math and you’ll see that this is a great opportunity to get the brand new Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tact, try SEOmoz PRO and save a ton of money at the same time.  Still want more? Keep reading to the bottom of the post for an extremely limited offer that’ll save you over $400…

If you’re ready to learn a ton of immediately actionable, advanced strategies you can start using right away, then Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2 is one of the best training investments you can make this year.

 

Video quality not representative of actual DVD content

Special Bonus Offer (while supplies last)…

Ultimate Advanced SEO Bundle: Tips, Tricks & Tactics Volumes 1+2 – Only $549 ($399 PRO)

For an extremely limited time, if you order Tips, Tricks & Tactics 2, you can get Volume 1 for only $100 more (regularly $499)!  We’ve only printed a couple hundred DVD copies of of this six-disc, 17 module series (the original printing sold out within weeks) specifically for this bundle.

Together, Tips, Tricks & Tactics Volumes 1+2 provide over 20 hours of top-notch, advanced strategies. This unrivaled education in SEO is an absolute must have for organizations, agencies, or individuals anxious to rapidly advance their search marketing know-how.

Get the
Ultimate Advanced SEO Bundle
, an $1,095 value, for only $549 (or $399 for PRO Members)!  Remember, this offer is limited to quantities on-hand and will go quickly…also, this special pricing and free shipping is only available until Saturday, April 3rd, so order fast.

 

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Over the last few days I’ve been in Austin Texas attending the South by South West Interactive (#SXSWi) conferences. Sometimes known as ‘Spring Break for Geeks’ I try to get out to this gathering each years because there are so many of my colleagues in attendance and it is an opportunity to meet up with old friends, network, do a little business and a meet a few readers at the same time.

Today is the last day of SXSW (I return home tomorrow) and despite some late nights I woke up this morning with a start on the dot of 5am (jet lag sucks). As I lay in bed reflecting upon the days I’ve just had I just started to feel very very grateful for this opportunity and especially the chance I’ve had this week to interact with some very special people.

A few highlights come to mind:

People Practicing the Art of Saying Hi

Lets start with what has happened constantly, day and night, since arriving. The people who come up and introduce themselves are amazing. Whether they be past or present readers of ProBlogger (or one of my other blogs), members at Third Tribe, previous bloggers from b5media….. the amount of people who have come up to say hi has been amazing.
I think what I enjoy so much about these real time and face to face interactions is that it makes me realize in a more tangible way that what I do as a blogger impacts ‘real people’. I find it very inspiring and a great reminder to keep building a blog here that helps such people to take their blogs to the next level. If you are one of the people who stepped up (sometimes a little out of your comfort zone) to say hi – thank you.

Salaam Garage

One project I came across on day 1 was Salaam Garage – founded by Amanda Koster (a photographer, author, speaker… and great person) – Salaam Garage brings together a variety of things I am interested in and passionate about – storytelling (with writing, video and image), humanitarianism (partnering with international NGOs) and traveling in teams. You can read more here.

Book Reading

On Friday at 5pm (day 1) I had the opportunity to do a book reading to promote the upcoming 2nd edition of ProBlogger the book (I’ll talk more about this in coming weeks as its launching late April). In the 20 minute session I planned to share what was new in the 2nd edition and run through a case study on my photography site (which is a new chapter in the book).

The session was 20 minutes but 10 minutes in a siren began to sound and an announcement came over the speaker system saying that an emergency had just taken place in the building and that everyone should evacuate. Wow – talk about a mood killer Everyone calmly filed out (literally thousands of people in the building at all of the different sessions taking place at that time).

My stomach sunk a little as I realized how far I’d travelled for this 20 minute session that was now potentially just 10 minutes but even as I traveled down the escalators people were very kind and I met some amazing people. Luckily we were let back in the room 10 minutes later and I was given 10 minutes to finish my presentation.

About half those who had been there returned which was great. The other half of those who were there for the 2nd half were there for a completely different book which was strange but it seemed to go ok!

I’ll turn the presentation into a video in the coming weeks but in the mean time if you’d like to see what the reading was like you can read the notes of one person in attendance here and here and see some visual notes on it here.

Photo Shoot – Meeting Jasmine

As I was leaving the book reading (the first time…. during the ‘emergency’) a number of people said hi – one of whom was an amazing photographer by the name of Jasmine Star. I’ve long admired Jasmine’s photography and have particularly enjoyed watching her blog develop over the years (she is someone who uses her blog VERY well to build her business – a great case study). Jasmine is a photographer who many of my dPS readers LOVE too.

We only met fleetingly on the elevator but later that evening Jasmine emailed me to ask if she could photograph me. I’d only been telling someone earlier that day that I needed to get some new headshots taken and so when the opportunity came to have someone of Jasmine’s calliber take them I leapt at the opportunity.

The shoot was fun and it was interesting to watch how Jasmine approached it – but even better as the opportunity to hang and connect with someone like Jasmine who is a very genuine person. You can see some of the results of the shoot at her blog (tell me which shots you like best as I’ve got to choose some).

Other Stuff

There are numerous other great things that have happened at SXSW this year. We had a great meetup for Third Tribe (at a pretty wacky bar), I spent a great relaxing afternoon with a smaller group of bloggers at a house party, there have been some fun larger parties in the evenings, I’ve done a number of fun interviews with both bloggers, media and for the promotion of the book and have had opportunity to catch up with some good friends who I’ve not seen for a while.

All in all I’m feeling very very grateful and lucky to be in the position I’m in. I’m also feeling pretty inspired to keep at what I do and to be as useful as possible.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Updates from SXSW

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A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com. Image by [phil h]

We are all storytellers. Whether we’re writing a blog, an ebook, a cheesy novel or a killer screenplay, even an essay, article or report.

Without some semblance of a story at the heart of it all, what’s left is a masturbatory exercise in rhetoric. And if there’s one thing we know about masturbation, it’s that we’re alone.

Thing is, alone doesn’t get us paid. Writing for money is a team sport that demands we pass the ball to a publisher and then a reader somewhere down the road.

The differences in various forms of writing reduce to executional semantics. Which means, the essence of what makes us better writers remains eternal and therefore something we can practice and eventually master, no matter what it is we write.

It Is Written

Behind the conventional wisdom, beneath the tips and techniques, before the fundamentals and the principles, and above everything else, there are certain foundational truths about what we do and how we do it.

This is a closer look at the latter.

These universal truths apply to pretty much any profession, by the way. But for some reason there are writers, especially newer writers, who tend to think such foundational truths either don’t exist or do not apply to them.

If that’s you, hear this clearly: that is the worst writing advice, ever.

The best writing advice – ever – comes from a core, fundamental perspective. Embrace these five gifts of truth and your writing will quickly and forever escalate to the next level.

1. Design your writing like an engineer.

The most pervasive and destructive illusion floating around the writing universe is that you can write something good without order and structure.

Even if you just wing it, if you like to make it up as you go, you’ll end up rewriting and revising until an ordered structure emerges and becomes the skeleton of a finished piece.

Some writers – often the most experienced and successful, so pay attention – give significant creative mindshare to the structure of a story before they write it. They build on a structure, rather than digging one out from the chaos of a convoluted draft.

The worst thing that can happen is that you don’t even realize that it’s convoluted. But you see, a story engineer would.

And it’s not just any ol’ skeleton, either. Structure isn’t something you make up in the moment, in mid-stride as you write. Story structure in any genre and in any deliverable format is based on accepted principles and models.

You violate them, or write in ignorance of them, at your own storytelling peril.

Without a narrative structure in place, even the most elegant and powerful prose plops to the ground in a heap of moist, quivering helplessness.

Order and structure is always – whether planned or retrofitted – a function of design. And design, by definition, is a practice based on certain physics, principles and those proven laws and models.

Learn them, then build your writing upon their proven strengths, and your story will be set free to elevate itself to art.

2. Polish your writing like an obsessive poet.

Writing is very much like singing, playing an instrument or excelling at athletics. The more you do it, the more evolved and polished your sensibilities become, until finally you can instinctively add subtlety and nuance to your performance.

Which, by the way, is what separates the published from the non-published.

Such deft touches usually look easier that they really are when observed from the cheap seats. Success in all of these pursuits is the product of craft, and craft is the product of evolved instincts colliding with proven principles.

The inherent risk in polishing your work is to overwrite, to imbue your narrative voice with a certain hue of purple. Polishing is as much the rendering of complex words into simpler terms as it is de-cluttering the space between your periods, while leaving just a little stylistic juice to spice things up.

Sooner or later your writing will settle into a voice that is uniquely yours. Once there, polishing your work becomes the literary equivalent of clearing your throat.

Sometimes the best writers are simply the best throat clearers.

3. Edit your writing like an anal retentive executioner with a hip edge.

Editing is easily confused with polishing. It can mean two things – copy editing (which is, in fact, the cleaning up and correction of your prose, whereas polishing is more a style and voice issue), and story editing, which is the trimming of expositional fat and the empowerment of narrative moments.

You need both. And you need some combination of two things to do it right: time, and the eyes of a stranger.

What you don’t need is someone trying to turn your work into the vanilla sensibilities of your old high school English teacher. Deliberate, effective voice trumps English 101 any day, provided your readers agree. (Example: earlier I used the word “executional.” Look it up, there is no such word. Each time I type it I see that pesky red underlining. But it’s the right word, the intended word, I’m confident you get it, and my old English teacher can bite me.)

One of the best strategies to bring out the best in your work is to set it aside for a while before turning a fierce editor’s eye back on it. And if you can’t be that set of eyes with objective clarity, consider outsourcing the task to someone who is as hip within your target niche as you are.

In my case, my wife. If it’s purple or if it’s bullshit, I’ll hear about it.

Turning in well-edited – in this case synonymous with appropriately edited – work is the great secret of published authors.

4. Advocate for your work like someone possessed.

Know that the manuscript next to yours on an editor’s desk, or the blog competing for the attention of your reader, is likely every bit as good as your stuff.

Maybe not – making sure that doesn’t happen is the goal here – but sooner or later that will certainly be the case.

Which means, you’ll win some and you’ll lose some.

Persistence is every bit as important to a writing career as talent and craft. This isn’t a business for the thin-skinned, and it isn’t a marketplace for the uninitiated.

Agents and editors and even readers are actually looking for a reason to reject our work as much as they are hoping they’ll fall in love. Nobody said this was fair, and it isn’t.

Your job is to be as passionate about how and to whom you are pitching your stories as you are about writing them. Which means you need to master skills such as manuscript preparation, niche market research, the competition, market trending, live pitching and written querying, not to mention picking yourself up after a good cry and doing it all over again.

The world is full of perfectly worthy manuscripts that didn’t get published because their writers didn’t have the chops to sell it. Don’t be that writer.

Whatever happens to you in this business is what you make happen.

5. Love your work as if you are its mother.

Your mother loves you unconditionally. And yet, she calls you to a higher level of performance, of being. She helps you get there, even if she doesn’t model it herself. She expects you to get there, and if she believes you really want it, she’ll accept nothing less.

And if you don’t, she’ll love you anyway, and just as much.

Her expectation of your excellence, your success, and ultimately your happiness, is the expression of her unconditional love for you. And chances are she takes no shit in the process.

She picks you up when you fall. She tends to your wounds when you fail. She hugs you when you need it, she kicks your ass when you need that.

Then she sends you back into the real world to try again. All in the name of simply loving you.

Your story needs more than a genius writer, a crack idea, a ruthless editor, a maniacal advocate and a few lucky breaks. It needs someone to love it.

Someone to will it into a state of excellence, who understands and accepts that good isn’t good enough in today’s market. Good is just the ticket to someone’s submissions inbox. The ultimate winners bring more.

What they bring is the love of their story, forged and coached and loved into existence at a motherly level of commitment.

And as the author you are, after all, its mother.

This is the best writing advice you will ever hear.

Because everything else in the vast universe of writing knowledge, anything possible to learn and apply to the craft and art of it, is empowered by these truths.

Without all this, all you have is an intention. And that alone won’t get you there.

These five core truths, combined with your talent and passion, not to mention your killer idea, just might.

Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, an instructional writing resource for novelists, screenwriters and those who love them. His new novel, Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, releases March 2010.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Best Writing Advice. Ever.

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