A couple of years ago, I was sitting at my keyboard wanting to blog about something. I didn't really know what I wanted to write about. I just knew I wanted to write. Ideas wouldn't come. I had "blogger's block"...
I thought to myself, "Well, there are web sites for everything else I can think of. I'll bet someone out there has a site full of blog ideas that I can browse through and borrow." So I did what any blogger would do. I Googled several variations of blogging, ideas, and inspirations. I came up with one site that flashed a different lame idea every few seconds from a list of about 10 ideas. Some inspiration. "We need a blog inspiration site!" I thought to myself.
To my surprise, the domain name was available. I bought it. I set up a hosting account that cost me a couple hundred bucks. I spent about two weeks writing the code to handle people coming to the site, signing up for accounts, submitting ideas, submitting links to the finished blog entries, sharing blogging resources, etc. It wasn't a tremendously beautiful site from a cosmetic point of view, but it was quick, efficient, and (I thought) easy to use. I advertised the site, I engaged in reciprocal linking, I talked about it in forums, etc. Then.... nothing. It flopped. Traffic was minimal. I don't think a single person submitted an idea or a link in two years. When the time came to renew the hosting contract, I didn't bother. But the domain name is registered for a while longer, so I'm going to use it.
So, instead of a site where people came to share and get ideas about blogging, you get another blog. I hope to share ideas with you along the way and hopefully live up to the "inspiration" of the site's name. If you've got ideas how I can make this a site that helps you with your blogging, feel free to post comments and let me know. Even if I don't use your idea, someone else visiting here might, and this site will have achieved its purpose.
I thought to myself, "Well, there are web sites for everything else I can think of. I'll bet someone out there has a site full of blog ideas that I can browse through and borrow." So I did what any blogger would do. I Googled several variations of blogging, ideas, and inspirations. I came up with one site that flashed a different lame idea every few seconds from a list of about 10 ideas. Some inspiration. "We need a blog inspiration site!" I thought to myself.
To my surprise, the domain name was available. I bought it. I set up a hosting account that cost me a couple hundred bucks. I spent about two weeks writing the code to handle people coming to the site, signing up for accounts, submitting ideas, submitting links to the finished blog entries, sharing blogging resources, etc. It wasn't a tremendously beautiful site from a cosmetic point of view, but it was quick, efficient, and (I thought) easy to use. I advertised the site, I engaged in reciprocal linking, I talked about it in forums, etc. Then.... nothing. It flopped. Traffic was minimal. I don't think a single person submitted an idea or a link in two years. When the time came to renew the hosting contract, I didn't bother. But the domain name is registered for a while longer, so I'm going to use it.
So, instead of a site where people came to share and get ideas about blogging, you get another blog. I hope to share ideas with you along the way and hopefully live up to the "inspiration" of the site's name. If you've got ideas how I can make this a site that helps you with your blogging, feel free to post comments and let me know. Even if I don't use your idea, someone else visiting here might, and this site will have achieved its purpose.
Hi there! I have a variety of different blogs, and I found your site by searching google for 'blog inspiration question of the day.' See, I really love what Vox does with their questions of the day, but other than that, I don't much care for their blogging system.
What I would LOVE to find (and I'm sure others would agree) is a feed we can subscribe to that would be nothing more than a question of the day. Something to get our brain juices flowing when writers block has us down.
That's the kind of feed I would put right on my WordPress dashboard and have emailed to me daily so that I could always have some fresh idea waiting each day.
You've got a great domain name, and if you're interested in the idea, drop me a line using the contact form on the site I entered in the URL (don't want to put my email here for spam reasons). Maybe I can help you with some parts of it, or you can just let me know what you think of the idea!
Thanks,
~Nicole
I've been looking for the right idea to start putting this site back to use, and I think you've given it to me. There's an RSS feed here, and I'm going to see if I can't start posting a blog idea of the day to spark other bloggers to write in their own blogs. Naturally, if you choose to blog about the idea I suggest, you might want to come back here to post a comment and link back to your site as a way to draw in some traffic. Thanks much for this idea!
Hi Michael, I can't believe your blog isn't popular. I searched on Google today for "blog inspiration" and your site came up first. Like you I have a bit of a bloggers block today.
The whole spirit of blogging is based around sharing; someone finds something new and throws it to the world for open discussion and improvement.
My blog (http://martonhouse.wordpress.com/), is based around new thinking, learning techniques and inspiration for businesses. As such I get a lot of lurkers and not much discussion, which is a shame.
Nicole is probably correct with her thoughts around a question of the day and hopefully that would spark a discussion. I had a failed blog a couple of years back (http://aisforapple.typepad.com/), which did the opposite and had a fact of the day. Again it had a load of lurkers but few talkers which is a little soul destroying.
I think blogs like this need more encouragement. I'll stick you on my blogroll and that's a start.
Shaune.