August was a great month for Contented Niche. With quite a bit of traffic flowing in, I’m pleased with the success this blog has experienced so far.

But now is the time to take it in a new direction. I’ve noticed that resource posts and other, longer, articles are drawing in the most attention, so I’m going to focus on those for a few months until I can sustain my numbers at a comfortable place. Then I’ll be back to daily posts and see where things go from there.

Does this mean I’m not going to highlight some of the best and most unique icons and WordPress themes? Of course not, just not as often.

And did I mention that I’m hard at work on building a few themes of my own? I don’t want to give any set in stone deadlines, but expect to see the first one posted by mid month.

So expect to see the changes come this week with fewer, but better (and certainly more in depth) blog posts to come.

Oh, and if you have any suggestions for a post you’d like to see, just drop me a comment below.

Thanks for sticking around.

I’ve read a lot of comments on other blogs as of late that talk about how long it takes them to post. We’re talking a half hour, an hour, sometimes more.

That’s too long for you to be spending on a single post.

Now, there’s a time and a place for a long post. I tend to spend a lot of time on resource lists or how-to guides I’ve posted on other blogs, but I know some of you out there are spending at least that much time on short, choppy posts like this one.

Sometimes people write slow. My old roommate was a very slow writer. It would take him days to finish a short four page double spaced essay–no matter the topic. And aside from “practice makes perfect”, conquering your slow writing isn’t going away any time soon. Unless, of course, you’re a slow typist. Then you just need to train yourself.

But enough rambling. Let’s get to the point.

There are a number of ways that you can improve your posting speed, and they won’t take you too long at all.

First, start a word processor file that you can use to keep your post notes on. Title ideas, topic ideas, websites that you’re drawing inspiration from, and anything else that can help you become a faster poster. Keeping all of your ideas in one place will significantly improve your posting times.

Next, visit your favorite free photo site, or one of the photo search engines I’ve previously recommended, and download a ton of pictures that you can use with your posts. Do they have to fit with the subject matter? Nah, the more unique the picture, the better. (And yes, I know I haven’t been using post images myself–but I’m working on it.)

Finally, keep your RSS reader updating as quickly as possible. When you get the scoop about a news story or something else that’s fast breaking, write up a couple of paragraphs on it as fast as you can, slide in a few links, and submit the post. If you can do a few of those a day, you’ll be well on your way to hundreds of posts in a couple of months.

This post took only 10 minutes to write. Simple as that, I had all of my research in front of me and all I had to do was type.

Blogging became somewhat of an addiction for me a few years ago. I guess it’s always been in my blood. Starting new projects. That whole entrepreneurial spirit.

The problem is that, especially with time consuming projects like blogs or businesses, when you get too many going at the same time, you lose the ability to work on each individual project as if it were the only one you have. Hence the need for time management.

Managing time is one of the single most important skills a person can have these days. If you’ve been to college, you know just how important it is. If you’ve found yourself balancing two jobs just to have enough money to live, you know just how important it is. Because proper time management can either make or break you, you have to be on top of how much time you are spending here or there. Anything else and you’re going to have problems keeping up with the crowd.

Here are some of the best ways to balance your time, especially if you have multiple blogs.

• Take Control of Your Time: Realize that you don’t have to do everything every single day. Make specific time for yourself to do all of that day’s or that week’s work. During that time, don’t do anything else. Put distractions aside so you can work specifically on exactly what you need to do. It’s the best way to make sure that your projects get done.
• Focus on a Different Blog Each Day: As long as you don’t have more than seven blogs under your belt, you should try focusing on a different blog each day. That way you allow yourself to get into the mood of your blog, which is great if your multiple blogs happen to be on different topics. Feel free, though, to do work on any of your blogs on the same day if your sites are all occupying the same or similar niches.
• Take Breaks: Unless you’re some kind of blogging machine or the Man of Steel, you need to take breaks from time to time. While you may think that this is a poor way to manage your time, consider that working all the time will certainly burn you out–and there is nothing like being burned out to really put a damper on the rest of the work you do that day. Don’t overwork yourself and you’ll actually become more productive.
• SEO, SEO, SEO: If you just can’t handle the pressure and you miss a day or two, rest assured that your blog won’t go unnoticed just because you’re not flooding it with new content. That’s the role that Search Engine Optimization plays. Take some time (preferably when you start blogging), find your keywords, build your backlinks, and watch as the search engine traffic flows in even on days you weren’t able to muster the energy to post.
• Take a Full Day Off Every Week: Once again, this seems to fly in the face of productivity. Taking a day off is not exactly a good way to advance the status of your blogs–but neither is working so hard that you burn yourself out and never feel like blogging again. You need some rest. You deserve some rest. So give yourself a day each week to not think about blogging. Check your stats if you like, but don’t even think about writing a post.
• Know When to Break From a Blog That is Acting More Like an Anchor: If you’re like me and you’ve managed to get yourself more blogs than you can handle, consider ditching one. That’s right, just don’t post on it anymore. Leave the ads up (someone still may click on them), but don’t post on it anymore. Don’t check the stats. Just leave it be so that you can direct your attention to other, more successful blogs that you’re more passionate about.

I’m a Mac user, so I saw Panic’s Coda website quite a long time ago when the awesome text editor (and so much more) was first released. While I don’t use their product (I’m a cheapskate and use Smultron and Cyberduck instead), I was totally impressed by the smoothness of their website. Slick JavaScript effects always catch my eye.

So, as you can imagine, I was pretty jazzed to hear about the new WP CODA theme for WordPress. Crafted with love by Greg Johnson, this theme has everything found in the original Coda website–but you can use it with WordPress. Pretty cool–but it has a few nagging drawbacks.

First off, it uses a lot of JavaScript (obviously) to create those shiny eye-catching effects everywhere. Not really a big deal, but there is a pretty sizable group of people out there who choose to turn JavaScript off permanently. Say goodbye to those visitors.

The other big issue is that, by default, WP CODA only displays pages–not posts. Big bummer. Though it can be changed fairly easily (and the theme’s author tells you how), it’s just one more step that you have to take to make your site actually functional. It’s also the reason I named this post as I did. If you’re looking for a more static looking website, but you absolutely love using WordPress as a CMS, this is the theme for you.

Despite the drawbacks, WP CODA is a very impressive theme, and it’s pretty obvious that a lot of work probably went into this. Well worth a download, being free and all.

Have you ever thought about just giving up on a blog?

Some of you will certainly disagree, but there comes a time, especially in some niches more than others, where you may feel compelled to completely give up on your blog. Now, this is a post to gear you up for the demise of Contented Niche. Far from it. Instead, consider this post as an open question. Would you ever give up on a blog? At what point are you spending far too much time and energy on something that isn’t giving you anything back?

There are some bloggers out there who feel that no matter your niche, no matter your post rate, as long as you provide good content to the blogosphere, your blog will eventually attain success. But what if it doesn’t? What if your blog features such an obscure niche that nobody cares? What if your traffic rarely climbs no matter how much effort you put into networking, link building, social media, and other such popularity searching tools?

Personally, I’d give up on a blog that, after three months, has experienced no growth in stats (traffic, income, and subscribers)–despite regular posting and various free or paid-for advertising. If I’m throwing everything I can into my blog and still nobody cares, I’ll move on to something new–unless it’s a personal blog or I’m writing about something I’m truly passionate about.

But what about you? What’s your cutoff–if you have one?

A lot of bloggers recommend adding pictures to the top of every post. While that’s all well and good (and I promise I’ll be doing the same at some point), finding the right picture can be a huge waste of time. You’ve already spent the last ten minutes to an hour writing your post–now you need to take a few more minutes to find a picture, scale it to the right size, upload it to your image gallery, and then add it to the post. Talk about tedious. Yawn.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, thanks to a number of great sites to help you search through the millions of photos at Flickr (and other photo hosts) for one special shot that can make your great post into something truly memorable. Here are the six best tools to aid your image search.

1. Picitup. Picitup is an image searching machine that blows away other web focused searches like Google Images. You start by typing in a keyword that you’re looking for. Hit search and you’ve got hundreds of images at your fingertips.

But a bulky load of images is nothing if you can’t narrow the results down. A good place for bloggers like you and me to start is to switch the settings over to Flickr and select Creative Commons in the process. This gives you access to a ton of high quality (and not so high quality) images that are free to use so long as you attribute the original author.

Creative Commons sorting is not the only way to filter pictures on Picitup, however. You can even break your search results down by color, size, orientation, type of picture (person, advertisement, etc.), and even object shape. The shape search has some issues, but the rest of the settings work really well.

2. Compfight. Thanks to coverage by a number of big name sites, Compfight has generated a ton of buzz about it being the “best” Flickr search app. While it doesn’t have nearly as large of a scope as Picitup does, Compfight more than makes up for it with a friendly and easily accessible user interface.

Unlike so many image searches that don’t show a lot of pictures per page, Compfight breaks free by displaying loads of pictures at once. All it takes is a quick scroll through the first couple of pages to find just the picture you need.

Of course, as with all of the Flickr search apps, Compfight allows you to sort your results by Creative Commons licensing, as well as whether or not you can get the original straight from Flickr. Search can also be done through tags or all text, whichever floats your boat.

3. FlickrStorm. On first glance, FlickrStorm doesn’t look like much (especially in Safari). You type in a keyword and you’re given an assortment of images straight from Flickr with whatever type of licensing you need for your project. And it seems like that’s all this app does.

Then you click on a picture.

Boom, the image pops up right on the side of your search so you never have to leave the page. And it appears in your history to the left so you can compare shots as you go.

Perhaps the handiest feature on FlickrStorm, though, is the tray. Shift-Click on a thumbnail of your choice and that picture is added to the tray. When you’ve had enough photo searching for the day, just click on the save icon and you’re given a website with all of the pictures from your tray displayed in whatever size you want. Link to it, save it, download the pictures in bulk. Whatever you want to do.

4. PictureSandbox. Don’t let the amateurish design fool you. PictureSandbox is a hell of an image search with capabilities that span from Flickr to Webshots to Fotolia and more. Its a great tool if you’re looking for stock photos too–but there are better search apps out there for Flickr alone.

After a search, images are displayed in a similar fashion to Compfight, but not nearly as many per page. You can then click on the images to display a larger thumbnail and show some of the photo’s specs. Unfortunately, there’s no way to sort the images by license, size or anything else.

5. Creative Commons. Then there’s the tried and true Creative Commons site. They have a pretty handy Flickr search engine built into their web page that takes you directly to the Flickr site itself. Searching this way yields plenty of results, but it can take a while for you to find exactly what picture you want thanks to the limited amount of pictures per page. Also, every search from the Creative Commons site ensures that you get a picture with CC licensing, obviously.

6. Flickr. The last great way to search Flickr is to use Flickr’s built in search itself. You don’t get the hundreds of photos at your fingertips like you do with some of the earlier tools, but there are more than enough search options to please even the most diligent image searcher. Sort by camera, content type, licensing and more.

So which app do you use to search for post pictures? Did I forget to add your favorite to the list? Let me know in the comments.

When talking advertisements, most website owners fall into a couple of groups. They either think that young websites should not have ads at all–lest it scare away potential early visitor. Or they assume that early ads are a good way to get people used to the idea that this page will, inevitably, have ads.

I fall into the latter category.

So when is the best time to add ads to your site? As soon as possible. But remember–if your website is young and fresh (like this one), you’ll find that your ads won’t get many (if any) clicks for some time to come. Programs like Google’s AdSense need tons of traffic in order to get popular while affiliate programs are luck of the draw. In other words, you need lots of views to make money through AdSense but quality, focused traffic to make money via affiliate programs–like the ones you see in the right column.

Start small when you add ads to your site. Don’t go hog wild with thousands of different products right from the get go. Tempting as it may be to try and get people to click your links, don’t overwhelm your visitors like some internet marketers tend to do. You want to get your viewers used to the idea of having ads on a website–not drive them away with sensory overload.

So slap a few AdSense blocks in your posts. Throw a handful of 125×125 pixel squares on your sidebar. And keep on posting to get your view and subscriber counts up. Then watch the money flow in.

When do you think is the best time to put ads up? Am I totally wrong in believing that the sooner you do it–the better?