25 Awesome Lessons you Can Learn From Skellie

1. Be audacious

Skellie wrote about this further in a post on Problogger about blogging with audacity.

the word suggests an approach that is willing to circumvent ‘the done thing’ in favor of gaining what is most important to you. It’s a unique word in that it has both positive and negative meanings!

She gave the following tips:

• They DO communicate with experts and learn from them
• They DO ask others for help
• They DO try things that might well fail

I’ve tried to all the above tips with my blog. Its worked. Skellies advice gave me the courage to interview some of the experts. It gave my the guts to ask for help – and I’ve found people more than willing to give it. And I know this series might fail, but I don’t care. I’ve learnt so much from it.

What audacious act can you do to change your blogger career?

2. Be a prolific guest poster

I’ve asked a lot of people about how a blogger can really stand out. They’ve all agreed that guest posting is one of the best steps, especially when combined with a twitter strategy. When talking about guest posting, they always refer back to Skellie.

This strategy can be very hard work. I’ll be doing a lot of guest posts in the coming months and will be reporting back on my results.

3. Make it easy to make the reader interact with your sidebar.

Skellie discussed this further in creating sidebars that work. She recommended that you make a list of your sites aims and rank them accordingly. You can use that list into creating a really useful sidebar.

This was a post that really helped me and is something that I’ll be going back to when I get my site redesigned.

4. Don’t be scared to have advertising

Skellie expanded this in her post detailing the 6 lessons she could only learn by letting her blog go

When I started Skelliewag I had never heard the term passive income and had not read widely on earning an income through web content. I tended to deride advertising when I mentioned it, and was very proud that Skelliewag.org was ad-free. If I’m honest, this is easier to do when you know you wouldn’t be making money anyway. Fast-forward to 5,000 subscribers and decent traffic and the stance becomes a lot more meaningful. My enjoyment of clean side-bars now requires a sacrifice of between $600 and $1000 a month, and I suspect that throughout Skelliewag’s lifespan I’ve sacrificed more than $5,000 in the name of no banner ads.

This was really interesting to learn. I’m currently uncomfortable with the idea of having ads on my blog – I had always planned to monetize in other ways, and just use my blog to promote my freelance services.

This post made me realize that it would be at least a month until I could set up these services and that I would be leaving money on the table in the meantime.

5. Use your blog as your portfolio

Skellie has refrained from using guest posts on her blog because her goal is to advertise herself. This has been incredibly effective in getting her freelance work and employment.

6. When you guest post, let the blogger know you’re available as a staff writer.

Many prolific guest posters have done this and have gotten a bit of work this way. This can also lead to referrals if they know of others needing work. 

7. Give without expecting.

Skelle discussed this further in an interview on Blog Clout

Giving without expecting to receive has been something that makes many of my readers feel really positive towards me. I’ve made it my policy never to ignore a request for help/advice, to engage with commenters and to help everyone as much as I can. In return, I have a wonderful network of people who recommend me highly to others. Without them I don’t think the blog would even be worth interviewing me about.

This is something that I’ve been doing and people really appreciate the help. I’ve found its increased the amount of buzz around my site and even led to some job offers.

8. Advertise your freelance services on your blog

Skellie talked about this further in an interview on Bloggers Talks

My About page on Skelliewag.org mentions that I’m a freelance blogger for hire, and I have a dedicated ‘Hire Me’ page on the blog. I get a handful of work requests each week as a result, and it’s enough to ensure that I have more work on offer than I can actually do (which is really the freelancer’s dream state).

This is something I’ll be doing quite soon and is a great free way of getting advertising.

9. Learn more about blogging by analyzing other blogs

Skellie did this in here series about ‘what works’. This is something that I have tried to do in this series and it has really helped my skyrocket my blogging knowledge.

10. Release a free e-book based on popular posts

Skellie did this based around her free ebook, The Simple Web. It is a way to create a viral product without investing too much extra time.

11. Encourage evangelicism around your blog

Skelied discussed this further in her post about creating a high traffic blog.

Someone who only skims your posts will register on your stat counter but they are not going to spread the ‘gospel’ of your blog to others, so to speak. An evangelical reader might stumble every post they read and link to you every week. They do the kind of things that allow you to rank highly in search, and to get torrents of traffic from social media. In other words, to build a high traffic blog you need to create a highly evangelical audience.

This is something that I will be tryingto encourage. I’ll do doing more research about creating a passionate community around my blog.

12. Self link

This was recommended as one of four quick and simple ways to increase page views on your blog. This is something that many do and advocate, but you should be careful that you don’t do this excessively. I highly recommend that you check

13. Use a plugin instead of manual archive management

Skellie used to manage her archives manually, until she switched to using the SRG clean archives plugin. This saves a lot of time and makes it a lot easier.

14. Leverage your profile when launching another blog within the same vertical

Skellie did this when she launched Anywired. She posted on her main blog as well as guest posted on Problogger. I have seen many other bloggers use this quite succesfully.

15. Diversify your online income sources

Skellie included this tip in her practical guide to earning 6 figures. Her post gave me lots of ideas about income generation and I highly recommend it.

16. Try and create a really big business

Skellie gave tips on how to do this with your blog. This post was fascinating and has given my ideas for the future of my blogs.

17. Find awesome flickr images

Skellie has written about her methods for finding create images in this series. It is a very useful guide, and a must read, for those who are unsure about how to find awesome images from other sources.

18 Always reply to your commenters

Skellie does this frequently, and I really appreciate it. It is good for two reasons

1. It helps the reader feel like part of the community
2. It is something that you can promote should advertise as a staff blogger.

19. Look at statistics over a long term period to see trends rather than short term

This is something I haven’t really done, as my blogs have always been short term projects. This is something that I’ll definitely be trialling in the future.

20. Be open to rebranding

Skellie has rebranded her blogs both with design and content. This has helped her audience to grow along with her. I wouldn’t recommend this too often, but it can help avoid burn out.

21. Write your conent on the one day and time stamp it

Skellie used to do this when she consistently wrote three posts a week. This wont work for everyones workload, but is very useful for those trying to maintain a work/life balance.

22. Ask for support via inbound links or social media votes

23. Leverage your forum presence

During her early days of blogging, Skellie used to post frequently on the authority blogger forums. This has been credited as one of the steps that helped her build her profile so quick.

24. Draw attention to your top posts on your sidebar

I have seen this tip emulated, to much success, on many of my favourite blogs. It can be done via multiple methods:

• You could get a popular posts widget
• You could manually add images or links identifying your top posts

25. Take a break

Skellie recommend this in her post about how to get more links, subscribers and comments. I was quite surprised at this and will refer back to this post when I take future breaks.