Photography: Color coded bookshelf by ranh

Looking for some reading material?

These eBooks cover topics ranging from content creation, promotion, social media, general blogging, business blogging, making money blogging to web writing/copywriting, SEO and design.

The collection totals more than 864 pages and 31 megabytes. Enjoy!

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Photography: Street Studio NYC by moriza

Over the last few weeks I set myself the challenge of boiling an entire hypothetical meta-blog down into one post. I asked myself: if I could only write one more post about blogging, what would it be?

This was the result: 101 essential skills for any blogger, gleaned from more than seven years of observation, as well as my own experiences. I feel confident in stating that a blogger who developed all of these skills would be a formidable force indeed. Where possible, I’ve linked to an article I feel will help you develop that skill, either here at Skelliewag or elsewhere.

I hope the work that went into constructing this list has resulted in something that will be useful to you for a long time to come.

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If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll know that I’m a big fan of simplicity, usability and removing web clutter.

I recently read A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home at Zen Habits and it had quite an effect on me — and others too, if 2399 Diggs are anything to go by. There are clearly a number of strong benefits to simplicity in the home, but what about simplicity on the web?

This question got me thinking about the benefits of approaching our blogs, websites and content with a minimalist mindset. What follows will be a complete guide to creating a minimalist website. The guide is broken up into individual elements.

Complete minimalism isn’t for everyone but I hope you’ll consider each element individually and on its own merits. There may be just one or two minimalist things you could do to imbue your website with a little more simplicity and clarity.

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Photography: The Sun Sets on Château de Chillon by Pear Biter

Most of us are familiar with the old fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Two children overhear their parents planning to abandon them. They prepare a pouch of white pebbles and, when taken deep into the forest, leave a trail of pebbles leading back to their home. They are able to follow the pebbles back to their parents.

The next time their parents try to abandon them, however, they’re only able to leave a trail of crumbs. The animals of the forest eat these crumbs and Hansel and Gretel become lost.

In this post I’ll be outlining the Hansel and Gretel link-building method. I believe it is the only link-building method that works.

Are your back-links bright white pebbles? Or are they crumbs waiting to be forgotten?

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Photography: Paste Party - Interview 12 by Oscalito

In the first part of this mini post-series I offered tips on getting great interviews. This week, we’ll look at how to execute them.

Any interview, regardless of the profile of the interviewed person, can be dead boring if the wrong questions are asked, or in the wrong way. Here are some tips to ensure your interviews crackle with life.

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