How To Get Super Ideas For Blog Posts

One of the most common let-downs for bloggers is the lack of ideas - let alone - great ideas for new blog posts. After the first 100 posts on your blog, has everything come to a standstill? Does your brain refuse to cough up the same old topics you once so enthusiastically wrote about? Well, this article is just the thing you were looking for! I've come up with some simple tips to give you 5 fantastic ways to collect stores of ideas for new updates on your blog.

Ideas from TV programmes

We've been told that TV makes you boring and dull. This is not entirely true. Of course, watching too much television leads to an unhealthy, lonely lifestyle. However, TV viewings in small dosages can give you unending ideas to write about. Even reality programmes can trigger ideas for posts you would've never thought of. Who's really the biggest loser in the world? Never mind the people who won the talent shows, whatever happened to their runners-up and who are the most successful non-winners? Quiz shows, for example, can give you ideas to put together interesting 'top ten' lists which are then read by thousands of people interested in that topic.

Ideas while going for a walk

Nature in itself is inspiring. Even a cold winter's day, when the world seems covered in snow, can bring bright, shiny ideas. However, we have to go out there to get to it. So get on your walking shoes and go for a stroll, meet people, and take note of the behaviour of strangers around you. Something they do or say can give birth to a character for a short story. You can write an entire short story/article based on something strange, odd, or remarkable one stranger did. Do not seclude yourself from the world. I know it's no longer popular, but I find talking to strangers wonderfully satisfying, and totally inspiring. The best thing is that people tell strangers things they would never reveal to friends and family. Did you almost step in dog poop (like I did this morning)? This can be the starting point of a very amusing blog post, or a serious article about society and the responsibility people have for their pets.

Ideas from Google Trends

Not all of us are experienced when it comes to  search engine marketing  but a quick search on Google Trends will show you all the hot topics people are searching for right now. Have you run out of ideas of your own but want to create a blog post that will be popular? Go to the link and see what's come up. This is pretty straight forward. Just research and write about one of them.

Ideas from old photographs

My kids love looking at their baby pictures. We find lots to talk about when I tell them stories of the photos we took of them. At the time of taking the pictures, we didn't realise they even had stories. Old photographs have a very inspiring quality to them. The sense of sight works overtime to conjure up forgotten or hidden thoughts and events. A wonderful childhood memory can be a beautiful blog post. It doesn't have to be a personal revelation, you can disguise your article/story as much or as little as you want. Events can also trigger ideas. Adding an old picture of yourself to your post will certainly be popular with your regular visitors. It will also give validation to your new update.

Ideas from reading other writers

There's a difference in copying from other writers/bloggers, and being inspired by them and their stories. I've been enriched by blog posts from fellow bloggers. Sometimes reading their articles have reminded me of things I've wanted to write about, but had forgotten (because I didn't have a pen when the inspiration hit). Reading is still one of the best ways of getting ideas for writing. We'd all be lost without each other.

It goes without saying, always carry a pen and notebook with you. The most inspiring and exciting idea can be lost in a second if you don't write it down.

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Who's Stuff Is This

Nashville Author Shares Methods to Help Highly-sensitive People Shield Themselves from Detrimental Energy

I am participating in a 28-day virtual tour for a new book titled Whose Stuff Is This? Finding Freedom from the Thoughts, Feelings, and Energy of Those Around You written by Yvonne Perry. The book offers empowering, proactive techniques to help empathic people manage energy and information overload coming from the collective unconsciousness of Earth. See http://whosestuffisthis.com/ for details.  

Yesterday, Yvonne visited Business Card to Business Blog.  Today, she is my guest blogger.  I hope you enjoy the press release she wrote announcing the release of her new book about empathy and intuition.

Summary: A highly-sensitive empath launches a book, WHOSE STUFF IS THIS? Finding Freedom from the Thoughts, Feelings, and Energy of Those Around You, with ways to stay emotionally healthy in am over-stimulating world.

NASHVILLE, TN February 24, 2010 — Humans are connected in many ways: the air we breathe, our basic needs and physiology, and energetically/spiritually. No one feels the power of this connection more than the energy-sensitive people, known as empaths, who unknowingly pick up on the detrimental thoughts, feelings, and even the illnesses of others and their environment. Many carry this negativity as if it were their own. In fact, some empaths are so burdened with the energy of others, they are no longer aware of what their own energy feels like. Mysterious illnesses, anxiety attacks, hearing voices, seeing shadows, feeling negative, fearful, anger, or having an impending sense of dread,— you name it, they feel it. And most empathic people have no idea where this stuff is coming from.

“Around your physical body, there is a magnetic shield of energy known as your aura. Its purpose is to provide protection and gather energy and information as you interface with your environment. In grade school, we were taught to keep our hands to ourselves. The same is true with the energy field surrounding our body,” writes Nashville author Yvonne Perry in her new book, WHOSE STUFF IS THIS? Finding Freedom from the Thoughts, Feelings, and Energy of Those Around You.“Ideally, your energy field should be kept two to three feet from your body, but many untrained empaths unknowingly allow their aura to extend and blend with the energy fields of others who have lax boundaries around their auras. When empathic people tap into the thoughts or emotional impulses of another person, the intuitive gift of empathy (much stronger than heart-felt compassion) reaches in and absorbs energy in an effort to heal or ‘fix’ whatever is out of sync. In doing so, the empath can become contaminated with unhealthy energy. Unfortunately, most of them do not know how to clear the psychic clutter in their auric field.”

Yvonne Perry

Yvonne is joined by psychotherapist Dr. Caron B. Goode, ED.D., NCC, DAPA to provide a fresh perspective on the psychological aspect of empathy and intuition. “Some of the characteristics that empaths display can also be diagnosed as ADD, agoraphobia, bipolar disorder, or clinical depression,” says Caron. “Most doctors and counselors are not aware that empathy fatigue exists, much less how to treat it, but this intuitive overload is a very real problem to energy-sensitive people.” Caron is the author of The Art & Science of Coaching Parents, Raising Intuitive Children, and Kids Who See Ghosts - Guide Them Through Their Fears.

“Yvonne Perry's book thoroughly explains the process of being an empath in today's world. She provides cognitive, emotional, physical, energetic, and spiritual explanations for the origin of deep empathy, while sharing her own amazing story and the stories of others,” says transformational coach Gini Grey. “This book offers an array of powerful techniques to help empathic people create healthy boundaries, stay balanced, and release other people's energy and emotions from their personal space. This book is a must read for anyone and everyone who is sensitive to the thoughts, moods and problems of those around them.”  Gini is the author of FROM CHAOS TO CALM: How to Shift Unhealthy Stress Patterns and Create Your Own Balance in Life.

About:

Yvonne is a graduate of American Institute of Holistic Theology where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Metaphysics. For years she was enmeshed with the dogma of religion that her family and church leaders passed down to her. Before she had a label to put on her empathetic ability, she called herself an intercessor. While praying for others she empathically took on their suffering until it severely challenged her emotional and physical health. Embracing a totally different path and belief system, she now openly uses the gift of empathy to help others heal their lives. http://WhoseStuffIsThis.com 

Come along on the tour with us. Tomorrow’s blog stop will be at Kids Who See Ghosts.  See the tour schedule at http://tinyurl.com/EmpathTour. 

Top 5 Irish Books To Buy For St Patrick's Day

March 17th is St Patrick's Day. As a person who considers herself a honorary Irish woman, this day has always been special to me. Having lived in Cork (Ireland) for nearly 7 years, I've experienced St. Patrick's Day celebrations first hand - as the Irish really celebrate it. The picture of myself and family, in St. Patrick Street, drenched in cold rain and filled with the warmth of the Irish people (sometimes the Irish warmth was induced by a dollop of rich Guinness), will always stay with me...green and orange flags...de-de-li-aye music... girls in curls...the odd smash of glass...dark bottles of frothy alcohol...

Reading is definitely not one of the things the Irish do on this holiday. Nevertheless, to celebrate St Patrick's Day A Blogger's Books style, I bring you a selection of the top Irish books selling on Amazon this year. Please click on the links in the images to read a full reviews on the website.

Ulysses - James Joyce (literary fiction)

• A record  440 customers' reviews


• 258 gave it 5 stars


• Amazon review (in part): Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.

Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift (YA fiction)

• 162 customers' reviews


• 95 gave it 5 stars


• Amazon review (in part): Divided into four parts, "Gulliver's Travels" is presented as the historical memoirs of Lemuel Gulliver who narrates his strange adventures in undiscovered countries. In doing so, Swift explores and satirises almost every conceivable issue important in both his time and in ours: politics, religion, gender, science, progress, government, family and our basic ideas of defining humanity. As well as this, the novel is full of wonder and humour (some of it bordering on the vulgar!) and Swift's exploration of imaginary societies and countries is satire at its peak - no one before or since has reached Swift's mastery of this style. 

The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe (family life)

• 66 customers' reviews


• 41 gave it 5 stars


• Amazon's review (in part): Francie Brady is a disaffected, working-class, Roman Catholic teenager living in Northern Ireland. His alcoholic father works in the local slaughterhouse and his mother, despite being a whir of household efficiency, is suicidal. The latest phase of the "troubles" in Ireland have not yet formally begun--it is the early '60s--but Francie is nonetheless caught in a cycle of pride, envy and poverty aggravated by the ancient conflict between Protestants and Catholics. 

Dracula - Bram Stoker (adult horror)

• 20 customers' reviews


• 6 gave it 5 stars


• Amazon's reviews (in part): A naive young Englishman travels to Transylvania to do business with a client, Count Dracula. After showing his true and terrifying colors, Dracula boards a ship for England in search of new, fresh blood. Unexplained disasters begin to occur in the streets of London before the mystery and the evil doer are finally put to rest. Told in a series of news reports from eyewitness observers to writers of personal diaries, this has a ring of believability that counterbalances nicely with Dracula's too-macabre-to-be-true exploits.

Angel's Ashes - Frank McCourt (true life)

• 1, 558 customers' reviews



• 1,124 gave it 5 stars


• Amazon's review (in part): McCourt paints a brutal yet poignant picture of his early days when there was rarely enough food on the table, and boots and coats were a luxury. In a melodic Irish voice that often lends a gentle humor to the unimaginable, the author remembers his wayward yet adoring father who was forever drinking what little money the family had. He recounts the painful loss of his siblings to avoidable sickness and hunger, a proud mother reduced to begging for charity, and the stench of the sewage-strewn streets that ran outside the front door. As McCourt approaches adolescence, he discovers the shame of poverty and the beauty of Shakespeare, the mystery of sex and the unforgiving power of the Irish Catholic Church.  

Well, there you have it - five books by Irish writers you should definitely get your hands on. Have a look at the reviews of these novels. They're mostly positive and readers certainly got a pleasure/satisfaction from reading them. I agree that Ulysses is a bit pompous. Frankly, I've abandoned attempts to read it myself. If you can get into it, readers have promised an unforgettable experience indeed.





Let me know how you get on. Happy St Patrick's day! If you're going out to see the parade, here are some St Patrick's Day costumes you may find useful to help you get into things.



  

   

4 Brilliant Online Sites To Write For

Bloggers are constantly looking for online sites that will pay them for their writing efforts. Today's post is short and to-the-point. The aim is to simply list 4 brilliant on line sites that will pay you for your blog posts. Of course, your blog traffic and Google ranking will affect how much you're offered for each job you complete. Note: These are online-writing little earners. If you're looking for hard copy writing opportunities please see my update page.

Note: signing up with any of the links below means that I will be listed as your referrer. This gives me a percentage of what you earn. I don't mind sharing the love if you don't :-) 

Social Spark

Submit as many blogs as you wish and earn from your blog posts. Their prices are reasonable, even for blogs without  high Google ratings. There's no worry about sharing your work on social networking sites because you get paid whether one person reads it or not. Sign up here.

Triond

You're free to write as much as (and when) you want. You don't have to wait to be invited, and there's no limit to what you can write each day. Payment per article depends on which of their sites you publish on. The drawback is that if your article isn't popular, you may not earn as much for it. Articles are all published on Triond's sites and not on your own blog. You can however, link to them from your own site. Sign up here.

Chitika

Place ads on your blog (compatible with Google ads) and decide whether you want your followers to see them or just your passing visitors. You can personalise ad units and tell Chitika what topics you want advertised, and what you wish to avoid. Place your ad (step-to-step guide on website) and start earning. Sign up here

Bukisa

This site is a bit like Triond. You can write as much as you wish, however, you have to promote your own work if you want to earn big. Click on the image to join up and start publishing or sign up here. There's not much scope here for making Wicked Profits, but every little adds up as long as you're constantly creating and writing. 

Each of these four sites will bring you hours of writing opportunities and potentially significant earnings each month. As you become more familiar with each site, you can decide which fit your needs and which ones you'd like to discard.

So what are you waiting for, Blogger? Sign up, get writing and start earning. How much you earn is entirely up to you!