“Finding a Mentor-writer—and What to Do Once You Have” plus 1 more

Finding a Mentor-writer—and What to Do Once You Have

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 01:01 PM PDT

This guest post is by Karol K of imcreator.com

Who is a mentor-writer? This question is probably on your mind right now. Even more importantly, why do you need one?

Let me take this from the top.

Is there a writer or an author you’ve always looked up to? Someone whose writing style is exceptionally interesting? One who can write a sentence in a way that makes you stop and think “darn, that’s good”?

I’m sure you’ll find someone who fits the description if you take a minute to think about it. Maybe it’s an author you’ve been reading forever. Or maybe it’s someone whose work you’ve found just recently. The timespan doesn’t really matter; what matters is that their style of writing is so addictive that you can’t stop reading.

But that’s just the definition of a good writer, so what does upgrading this person’s status to a “mentor” do for you?

What can a mentor do for you?

A couple of things.

First of all, they inspire you to grow as a writer. When you read their work, you simply pay closer attention to all the things they are doing. This is very motivating by itself. You start thinking, “wow, I need to write something just like that.”

Secondly, they show you a way of writing you wouldn’t have stumbled upon otherwise. Every writer who has somehow gained your recognition is likely to possess their own voice and style (the thing that makes them so recognizable). Being aware of this and noticing this style consciously can do a lot for your own style of writing.

You can use their work as a benchmark for your own writing. Whenever you finish an article or post, you can put it against a piece of your mentor’s work. Is your flow equally as good as your mentor’s? If not, there’s room for possible improvement right there.

How to choose your mentor

Now, I’m not going to tell you who you should choose, or why my mentor is better than yours. This is not the point. The point is to have a mentor who’s unique to your own style and the way you see quality writing.

So you’ll have to give it a little thought and select, on your own, just one writer who gives you the most inspiration.

The easiest way of doing this is to simply take a look at your bookshelf. One writer (or two) is likely to dominate it. You can also include the writers you find in the online world. A good place to start in that space are with the blogs you read the most.

My writing mentor is Jeremy Clarkson. Yes, the Top Gear guy. Why him, of all people?

As it turns out, I’ve been reading his books for a long time now. I’ve bought everything he’s ever released. Every single one of his books is extremely entertaining and interesting to me. His style is just exceptional.

At some point when reading one of his books I simply decided that I need to write more like him, and that was it. That was the moment. He became my mentor.

Again, this is only my perspective, you may (and should) have a different opinion. But that’s okay. That’s the whole point of a personal mentor-writer. Other people don’t have to agree with you, or tell you that there are other writers who are better. It’s no one else’s business who you choose.

What to do once you have a mentor

The first rule is to read everything they write. Every writer evolves, mentors included. Evolve along with your mentor. See what’s changing in their style, the topics they cover, the novels they write, etc. Just be up-to-date with what’s going on with them.

The second rule is to read their work consciously. What I mean by that is to read it in a twofold way, so to speak. First, you obviously like to read your mentor’s work, so enjoy it like you always do. But more than that, be aware of the technique and the style they’re using. Notice all the clever sentences, funny references, engaging paragraphs. To put it simply, be aware of what you’re reading.

The final step is to develop and improve your own style after being influenced by your mentor. A specific style is what distinguishes one writer from the other.

For example, every web design blogger can write a post on “How to design a proper about page.” But every one of them will create the post in a completely different way. The point is to find your own way of delivering a message. Your mentor can help you with that because they are likely to already have a distinct and noticeable style.

Finally, grow as a writer. Take all the inspiration and information you’ve gotten from your mentor and put it into your own work.

What not to do

This is basic, but it needs to be said: don’t be a copycat.

You’re supposed to get inspiration, not to copy your mentor’s style entirely. This advice sounds obvious, but you really need to be careful here. It’s quite easy to start copying your mentor subconsciously without even noticing it.

Keep in mind that you probably have a voice within you that’s just as good as your mentor’s. You only need to find it and bring it to the surface. And yes, I really mean it!

Now, there’s one more step. It’s not mandatory by any means, but it’s a nice addition to the whole approach I’m presenting here.

Contacting your mentor

Because why the heck not? You probably have a lot of questions to ask, a lot of things to say, and a lot of things to thank them for. Being able to speak (or email) your mentor directly might just be the motivator you need to get to the next level.

Contacting your mentor might not be easy, and might take some time to get through all the gate keepers and all kinds of other people. But when you finally manage to get in touch, it’s totally worth it.

Do you have your writing-mentor already? How did you find them? Let me know, I’m curious.

Karol K. is a freelance writer, and a blogger. If you want to check out what he’s up to, feel free to hit him up on Twitter (@carlosinho).

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Finding a Mentor-writer—and What to Do Once You Have

5 Big Hosting Mistakes Bloggers Don’t Know They’re Making

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 07:05 AM PDT

This guest post is by the Blog Tyrant.

If you take your blogging seriously you’ll know that you have to wear a lot of different hats. We are content marketers, SEO students, social media savants, and sometimes web designers.

But what a lot of bloggers seem to forget is that our blog hosting setup is an extremely crucial piece in the puzzle. Yet it often gets overlooked because it is scary, boring or just too darn hard.

It is really complicated stuff. I certainly couldn’t cover everything in one post—some people spend their whole careers figuring it out!

What I am going to show you, however, is a few big mistakes that you need to make sure you avoid. If you know any others please leave a comment and let me know. It might really help someone.

1. Setting up on a free host instead of your own

I’ve talked about this a lot on my blog and so have writers here on ProBlogger but it is a mistake that many new bloggers continue to make.

Now don’t get me wrong, services like Tumblr are a really cool way to get your word out there and blog socially but if you want to take it to the next level and go pro, you need to get your own domain name, and install WordPress on your own host.

Here’s why I don’t like freely hosted blogs:

Lack of control: On a free blog, you don’t have total control over the theme, settings, back end, or hosting environment. You are essentially leasing a space from the owners.
You don’t own it: The big concern for me is that on a lot of free platforms you don’t own the blog! This is a really big problem if you are trying to go professional or if you ever want to sell the blog down the track.
Google doesn’t rank them as well: The last big clincher for me is that many SEOs will tell you that Google doesn’t rank these free domains as well in the search results. If you want to step up and compete in a very competitive niche, you’ll need your own domain name and a solid permalink structure.

And it’s important that you switch sooner rather than later if you are planning on doing it. You see, when you change from free to paid hosting, there’s a whole host of other issues to sort out, like a loss of current rankings if your link structure changes.

It’s very important that you weigh up the pros and cons of a migration like this as soon as possible.

2. Not choosing a host with live support

As I mentioned at the start, this stuff is really confusing. And things often go wrong. When they do, it is really important that you have live support staff that can help you out and get the problem fixed fast, without hassle.

Part of the reason I recommended Blue Host in my post on the best host for new WordPress bloggers was because they have live, 24/7 support staff that are incredibly helpful. I am no longer with Blue Host as I outgrew the service, but for the years that I was there, I had countless life-saving, middle-of-the-night, brilliant support sessions from staff who really know their stuff.

A screenshot of the live support wait time at Blue Host recently

I have noticed that it is really common to get stressed and panicked when you don’t understand something fully. And because hosting is so complicated, it is really easy to lose your cool when something goes wrong. It is a massive advantage to know there are people there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in case something goes wrong.

3. Thinking that “unlimited domains” actually means unlimited domains

Something that I learned only recently is that when most hosts say that you get unlimited domains, unlimited hosting, and unlimited databases, they don’t actually mean it.

If you dig deeper into the terms of service you will find that most hosts (not all) have an excessive storage policy which basically says that if you abuse your “unlimited” space, your service will be affected.

Some of the things they might do include:

Throttling: This is where your site gets slowed down in order to help cope with the strain on the servers. This might happen if you have a bunch of sites that are taking up too much bandwidth for your hosting environment.
Stopped backups: Most good hosts perform a daily backup of your entire server to re-install if something goes wrong. But if you exceed the allowed file count by too much, you’ll find that those automatic daily backups stop pretty quickly.
Account suspension: If things get really bad and the host suspects that you are hosting files not related to any website activity, they will suspend your account. This is something that you really don’t want to happen.

My best tip here would be to know exactly what your host’s policies are on file storage, and to then make sure you know exactly what your server needs are.

If your blog is getting a lot of traffic and constantly growing it might be time to move to a more advanced environment like a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a dedicated host.

4. Mixing your experimental stuff with your money sites

If you have a website or blog that is starting to make money that you rely on, it is really important to make sure it is on its own hosting account.

You see, what often happens is that we purchase one hosting package and then start experimenting with new blogs and websites. Eventually the whole situation gets cluttered, crowded, and very unprofessional.

Blogs that are starting to get some good traffic and have good rankings and loyal subscribers need to be protected and looked after. Make sure you keep them on their own host for security and up-time reasons, and leave your experimental sites to a different hosting package and location.

5. Failing to delete old blogs, websites, and files

The last thing I want to talk about is the fact that many bloggers leave abandoned or dead files, blogs, and websites in their host not knowing that they represent a security threat.

Without going in to all the details (I don’t really know all the details!), hackers can use insecure and old files to access your account in some situations. This is especially risky if you have been using WordPress and not keeping your plugins and installations up to date. It’s a threat.

If you’re not going to use a blog any more, just delete it. It’s not the easiest process, but it’s something that is worthwhile learning. So how do you do it?

Well, in some hosting environments you can just go to Addon Domains and then remove the domain that you want to stop using. That often removes the installation and the remaning database.

Other times, you will need to use PHPMyAdmin to locate the old site and delete the corresponding database. This can be a complicated process, so it’s best to ask your own host for advice on how to proceed. As mentioned, some environments and setups are different to others.

Are you making any mistakes?

I’d love to know if you are making any of these mistakes or whether you can think of any others that we can add to the list. Please leave a comment and let me know.

The Blog Tyrant is a 26 year old Australian guy who plays video games at lunch time and sells blogs for $20,000 a pop.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

5 Big Hosting Mistakes Bloggers Don’t Know They’re Making