Week 18 Round-Up & Comment Awards

17 May, 2008 - Misc - 8 Comments

It’s Saturday and that means it’s time for a quick recap of the week on this blog. This is a scheduled post, as my entire Saturday is being spent paintballing. :)

Notable Points of the Week

Competitions - I’m excited to say I won two blogging competitions this week. First, I won John Cow’s $100 Amazon gift certificate competition after I wrote the best comment on his blog (more on that later in the week). I then won a free 160×62px banner spot at Michael Talk after Michael had a random drawing on Twitter. Thank you to both of you for your generosity! I’m hoping to offer the $100 Amazon gift certificate in my own small competition here at this blog.

Brazen Careerist - Some of you will know I’m a member of Brazen Careerist. It’s a blog formed by syndicating the feeds of many fantastic bloggers (they seem to think I’m a fantastic blogger. How wrong they are! :lol: ). I was asked to become a member of Brazen when it launched and I’m very glad I accepted the offer. It has brought about a lot of new friendships and contacts for my blog and has given me some very good traffic. Not more so than this week, when my post You Shouldn’t Aspire to Work from Home became the main article on the Brazen Careerist homepage. Welcome to all those Brazen members who are now subscribers!

Conferences - I’m considering attending BarCamp NorthEast. If you’re not familiar with BarCamp, it is a set of conferences around the world that can be organised by anybody. You’re not allowed to be a spectator, so everybody who attends BarCamp NorthEast has to participate at some level, usually in the form of a presentation, demo or lecture. It’s all quite disorganised in some ways, as you’re never sure what people will be talking about until you get to the event, but apparently it works. I’m considering attending and converting my “6 Google Analytics Secrets” post in to a presentation.

Look out for… - In line with my new outlook on the community of blogging, on Monday I’ll be launching details to allow you to get a free review of your blog on this blog. Just like the reviews that others write for a modest fee, only I’ll be writing them for free. On Monday, I’ll explain how to get your free review. It’s quite simple, I promise. :)

Comments of the Week - Each week, from this point forward, I’m going to try and repay my best commentators by sharing their comments and linking to their blogs. This week I’ve chosen three comments that I think qualify as the best.

The first comment comes from Ben Barden. Ben is a fantastic reader of my blog. He always writes constructive comments and has developed and continues to develop a wonderful blog. Here is his comment, in response to my post “You Shouldn’t Aspire to Work from Home“.

“I’ve been working from home since October 2006, and I love it. I work for a small software company and we have a phone system that routes to people in a few different locations. We are at least talking to people over the phone, and often we dial into their computers to install/upgrade software.

I establish a division between office hours and out of hours by having desks on opposite sides of the room. During the day my wife and I share the same office and work on one side of the room, using our laptops. By night I go to the other side of the room with my desktop computers and dual monitors. That establishes a good separation between day and night.

Working from home means we are MORE likely to take the dog for a walk when we finish work. If we still worked in an office we might not want to go out for a walk immediately after getting home. And at this time of year (winter for us) we really have to be quick to go out before it gets dark.

Try looking at your working environment to see if it’s as good as it can possibly be. I have a post about this on my site. Take breaks and ensure you don’t eat lunch at your desk. You could try using Skype to talk with people more easily, i.e. not only by meeting up with them. Cheaper and more convenient, especially if you have contacts all over the world.”

Thanks for that excellent comment, Ben!

My other favourite of this week comes from Michael Henreckson of The Paperweight. Michael is a fellow Brazen Careerist, which in and of itself is a sign of the quality of content he puts out on his blog and his life in general. Here is his comment, in response to my post “How to Ensure Working from Home is not Boring“.

“That’s a very insightful post. As someone who does a lot of work (and school) from home, a lot of things are kind of true, and the strategies you suggest for countering them do work. I find it very important to get up fairly early and get dressed before the morning gets away from me. By being dressed professionally (read something other than pj’s) I feel much more confident and ready to take on the day. You have to act like work is work and separate from home. Otherwise everything turns into one big blur which isn’t really very fun unless you totally enjoy what you’re doing and want to do it every waking minute.

Take breaks, create variety, talk to people, get dressed, and get some exercise.”

Thank you for the well thought out comment, Michael. I hope to see more comments from you in the future.

My third favourite of the week comes from Lance Haun of YourHRGuy.com. Here is his comment, in response to my post, “Blogging for Money Displaces Your Focus“.

“Good post. It seems like if you go into blogging with money on the mind, the content becomes secondary to your blog. That’s obviously backwards. When I started blogging from a more professional standpoint, I didn’t even know you could make money (granted things change in two years).

As someone who makes money blogging, you really have to focus yourself on thinking that you’re not selling advertising or affiliate space or whatever your monetization strategy is. You have to think your focus is on selling content. That’s where the money comes from. That means writing compelling content and promoting your blog based on the content that you are creating. If people won’t come to your site to read your content, they won’t come to read your advertisement.

I echo Dave’s comment saying you’re on the right track if this becomes your focus.”

Thanks for the excellent comment, Lance. I also hope to see more comments from you in the future.

If you want to see your name and link in this spot next week, be sure to come out of the woodwork and give your opinion on the posts I write.

Welcome to my New Commentators - Each week I intend to thank the people who have wrote a comment on my blog for the first time. Here is this weeks list:

Katy Lewis - Katy and I met a few weeks back on a weekend gathering of users from a forum I frequent. Thanks for popping over to my blog, Katy!
Christien Louviere
Theresa Mallinson
Kate Hutchinson
Neil Wilson
Imran Ali - Imran works from a coworking office space that I’m going for a tour of on Monday. Hopefully Imran will be there so I can meet him.
Hunter Nuttall - Hunter has wrote several comments on my blog this week. Thanks Hunter!
Michael Henreckson - Yep, Michael’s first comment on my blog also qualified for comment of the week. Thanks Michael!
Dave de Souza - I could have sworn Dave had wrote comments in the past, but I can’t find any in my records. I guess we’ve only conversed via email in the past. Thanks for writing your first comment, Dave!
Lance Haun - Yep, Lance too received the comment of the week award with his first comment. Thanks Lance!

As you can see, I had a lot of new commentators this week. I want to thank all my commentators, new and old. It’s your opinions that make this blog what it is, and it wouldn’t be the same without you.

That’s all for this week. Tomorrow there will be link love post, handing out the best of the love to the best of the weeks articles. If you wrote an article on your blog this week that you think my readers will be interested in, please post a comment here with the link and I’ll consider including it in Sunday’s post.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

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Posted on 17 May, 2008 by Jamie Harrop
Filed Under Misc |

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8 Comments»

Comment by DaveD
2008-05-17 15:19:01

Thanks for the mention.

I look forward to the competition.

DaveD’s last blog post..Tax Links From Finance Blogs

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Comment by Jamie Harrop
2008-05-18 09:02:17

No problem, Dave.

I’m looking forward to the competition too. :)

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Comment by Ben Barden
2008-05-18 04:05:14

Thanks for the link love, Jamie! :) Glad you liked the comment(s).

Ben Barden’s last blog post..Quick Tips: Building a discussions section

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Comment by Jamie Harrop
2008-05-18 09:03:47

No problem, Ben.

For what it’s worth, you did actually write your first comment last month, but that was just in response to a little link love I sent your way. I counted your first comment as a spontaneous comment, and that came this week. :)

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Comment by Barbara Ling
2008-05-18 14:21:41

Congratulations on winning those contents!

Brazen Careerist is by Penelope Trunk, right? She’s an excellent resource in the career/recruiter world - I like reading her articles. Very insightful.

Enjoy,

Barbara

Barbara Ling’s last blog post..Middleschooler Hacks Personal Wordpress Theme, Makes Money Online

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Comment by Jamie Harrop
2008-05-18 14:25:34

Thanks Barbara. :)

Yep, Brazen Careerist was formed, in part, by Penelope. She’s a lovely women and a fantastic writer. :)

Thanks for stopping by and writing a comment. I would love to see more comments from you in the future.

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Comment by Kate Hutchinson Subscribed to comments via email
2008-05-19 18:09:47

Thanks for the shout-out Jamie. :)
Kate Hutchinson’s last blog post..Taking Today

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Comment by Jamie Harrop
2008-05-19 18:29:49

My pleasure, Kate. :)

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