Admittedly, this is not a problem we have around here.

Our readers are so spectacularly awesome that they CONSTANTLY leave comments on our threads, and it’s not easy to keep up with them all!  Seriously, you guys are comment MACHINES, and we love you for it.

Seriously, we do.  Nothing makes blogging feel better than to know you’re doing some kind of good somewhere.  If your humor blog is making people laugh or your philosophy board is making them think or if your blog mechanics board is giving people new and useful ideas that they want to try themselves, the whole process just FEELS better.  You’re doing good in the world and that’s quite a reward.

But if your comments are falling off, what do you do?

You could try asking questions of your readers.  What would you like us to cover? is a great one.  What do YOU want to know?

Don’t tell anyone about this, but this approach serves two useful purposes.  One, it gets people engaged, and telling you what they want.  This in turn gives you a great excuse to PROVIDE it.  And when you provide what people want, you not only never have to find a blog idea again, you also make a whole lot of people very happy.

So next time you write a blog, be sure to ask your readers what they want.  It’ll give you ideas you never dreamed of.

And just to take my own advice–what do YOU guys want me to talk about?  Just hit the comments section and tell me what you want to see here!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Now, I know we hear a LOT about intellectual property law and all that sort of thing. It hits the papers, it hits the news media, it’s all over the place. Pirates this, thieves that, RIAA, MPAA, so on and so forth on into eternity.

So how do we defend our ideas in a digital age, anyway?

Well, if you catch Seth Godin’s blog, you’ll know his answer, and it’s a pretty good one.

Don’t.

Instead of fighting so hard to keep your ideas YOUR IDEAS, why not hand them out like candy? Become known as the guy with the great ideas–or the gal with the great ideas, depending–and try and make your mark on that? Sure, you can hire lawyers and get all strong-arm and sue-happy over anyone who BREATHES wrong at your idea, but why not be “the guy who came up with it.” instead?

Maybe someone took your ball and ran with it. Great! But it’ll still be YOUR BALL. There’s something to the quality of benevolence, folks, and it’s a concept worth thinking about.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Contests and sweepstakes are a fantastic way of getting people to your site. Who doesn’t like free stuff? A lot of people rely simply on a “comment and win” approach for their contests; simply comment the article and you get a chance to win. While this may be good for starters, it’s not good to rely on this method every time. Try to be more creative.

For example, create a news tip contest; the best news tip receives a prize. This way, not only are you getting people to participate, but you’re getting free news tips in your e-mail inbox.

Another idea is to get people to tweet a phrase referring to your website. Viral marketing is one of the best ways to get some traffic.

Overall, you just have to be creative and try something new. Get them involved in the community instead of just encouraging spamming. Make the contest fun for everyone!

Popularity: 3% [?]

I have written before about services like elance as a source of new income for bloggers. Today I want to talk about using it to help build your online business. As a blogger you are creative thinker, you probably have dozens of ideas a day that could help you generate income.

One of the drawbacks to these ideas is often the lack of technical expertise and or time to acquire the new skills. I was interested to read on Darren Rowse blog - Problogger that he recently used elance to find someone to write a very basic wordprocessor program for him. He wanted something that would mimic a typewriter more than act as a wordprocessor.

He paid only $50 for the program to be written, he posted it to his website and has received 12,000 views of that post to date, he was also mentioned in the British newspaper The Observer. All this for $50.

The point is, even if you don’t have the skills to execute your idea, someone out there does, so why not make the investment, if you really believe your idea will help your business or will help you launch a new one, then why wouldn’t you invest in it?

What would you hire someone to create for you?

Popularity: 3% [?]

In the blogosphere there is a tendency, especially with niche blogs for bloggers to repeat each other. This has long been true of writers in general, not just bloggers.

One person has a new idea, or even a new version of an old idea and the idea is repeated. On busy days, with the need to get a post out, it can be tempting to simply reguritate someone else’s idea in your own words.  Whilst, in general there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this, after all you are bringing the idea to a new audience who quite probably hasn’t encountered it or at least not your version, sometimes its better for you to think in opposites to the idea.

There is a famous story of the Ford Motor Company employing Edward De Bono to advise them on how to make their cars more attractive. De Bono was the creator of Lateral Thinking. His suggestion was for Ford to buy parking lots in major cities and make them available only to drivers of Ford cars.

He turned Ford’s thinking on its head. Ford felt this was a litttle too radical and didn’t pursue it, but you can see how a little twisted thinking can come up with some very unique ways of looking at old problems.

What twist will you put on your thinking today?

Popularity: 2% [?]

I keep a notebook with me at all times, actually I have 3, one I keep in my bag so when I am out I have it, one I keep next to the bed and the other next to my seat in the living room. Why the low tech pen & paper?  I, like you, never know where an idea is going to come from - a book I am reading in bed, a tv program I am watching, the people around me in a coffee shop, who knows.  So I want to be prepared, by keeping a notebook handy I can make a note of what has inspired me, if I have time I might even flesh the idea out a little.

By keeping more than one I never have to go searching for it and therefore get distracted and lose the idea. Thats the important part. By keeping the ideas in a notebook I have them to refer back to all the time. I might have an idea and not use it for months or I might combine several ideas into one.

How are you tracking your great ideas?

Popularity: 5% [?]