I Think I Have a Resolution Solution

When I first starting blogging regularly it was at my blog Searching for Sustenance where I blogged all about food. It was a passion, obsession and I felt I was on a mission. I needed a bit of a break, but when the new year rolled around and the news, the Internet and the world seemed to be obsessed about all of the weight-loss tricks that could be offered, the foodie in me starting clawing at me to be heard again. So, today, I posted to Searching for Sustenance and want to share the post with you if you feel so inclined.

New Year, New Body, New Technique

I know what's going on this week.

It's weight loss time!

The gyms are packed (my brother, a gym rat by nature, hates this time of year).
The diets are started.
The promises made.
Everyone is being so good.... Everyone is being so healthy...

Please try something new!

Or are they?

What's your plan? Is it the same as last year? Is it your "faithful routine" you fall back on whenever you need to shed some pounds that "works for you every time"?

I have a suggestion. In fact, it is a plea.
I want you to try something new this year.
I want you to truly look out for your health.
I want you to break this cycle, I want you to feel better and I want you to start off 2013 thinking about SOMETHING ELSE!!

This is no quick fix, but I believe it is worth the investment of your time.

Click Here to Read the Entire Post

A Call to Action: Ban Fracking

The following is an excerpt from a post I just published on the Searching for Sustenance blog entitled "What the FRACK?!" It is important the word gets out to as many as possible, so I am sharing it here with you as well.

What The FRACK?!

image from the Green Cupboards Fracking Debate

Sometimes when I open my e-mail I get really disappointed.

Today was one such day, because today I saw an e-mail entitled "Obama's Plan to Frack."

I was hoping beyond hope that I read it wrong, or that it was some twisted play on words, but it was not. The subject line summarized the sadness within the e-mail itself, President Obama is planning to use fracking as a technique to unearth the natural gases his energy plan calls for.

What is Fracking and What's the Big Deal?

It is quite possible you have been hearing/reading this term "fracking" a lot lately, but, perhaps are still not really sure what it means. While I have read lots and lots of definitions for hydraulic fracturing (that's what "fracking" is short for), I think this video by Food & Water Watch does an excellent job of showing us what fracking is and why it is so risky.  CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE POST.

My Stumble Buddies

Every single week I participate in a discussion in the Kludgy Mom BlogFrog community where bloggers get together, share posts they're proud of and help boost each other up using StumbleUpon. It has been an amazing experience. Since I started participating this past winter I have learned so much about blogging, social media, the Internet, myself, places around the world and my fellow Stumblers.

As each week passes, I keep thinking these bloggers are awesome - I want to share them with everyone! And, in little ways, I have - very often my Stumble Buddies are featured in the "Food Reads" or "Good Food (Recipes)" section of my Friday's Food Finds segment on my Searching for Sustenance blog, or I've linked to their blogs on a relevant post (like in How Darren Rowse Forever Changed my Life in 10 Days), but so far only one Stumble Buddy has received the type of spotlight treatment I would like to give to all those who have taught me so much, and that is Read Aloud Dad in a post I wrote entitled Are You Reading Read Aloud Dad?

It is time to spread the love. Each week another one of my Stumble Buddies will be featured here on Rivera Runs Through It. For now I will leave you with the links above to give you a taste of what's to come and an open invitation to our weekly StumbleUpon discussion that starts each Wednesday. It's open to all bloggers, it has a couple of rules, but if you are interested, come check it out at the Kludgy Mom BlogFrog Community this Wednesday, June 1, 2011 will mark the beginning of WEEK 37.

Where Do I Get My Degree in Blogging?

You've heard that blogging has turned out to be an honest-to-goodness career option for some folks. You're now wondering-

• Can I get a degree in blogging? 
• Is there a certification process? 
• Will it be too expensive for me to explore?

The answers: No, no and no.

First Start Blogging 

Let's make something clear: if you are reading this over an Internet connection and you have a keyboard in front of you, you can already be blogging. You start at any free blog hosting site (I use Blogger because I am sort-of Google addicted) and you start writing. The minute you start doing that, believe it or not, you can start calling yourself a blogger.

Recognize When You Need Help - Don't Give Up!

If you have already gotten that far then perhaps you have come to realize that just because you write something, no matter how brilliant it might be, that doesn't mean readers will be reading it. It's not their fault, they probably don't even know that it's there! This is when every blogger starts asking all those big blogging questions:

• How do I build my audience?
• How do I engage my readers? 
• How do I get people to actually follow my blog?
• How the heck does anyone ever make any money doing this?

This is a time when it seems like maybe you should throw in the towel and start using your time doing something else entirely - my advice? DON"T GIVE UP! While I have yet to rake in the millions, I am happy to say that I have learned the answers to these questions in the last couple of months, with help. Here's a sampling of my little success story so far:

• I have taken my food blog Searching for Sustenance from less than 50 pageviews in September of 2010 to over 4,000 pageviews in March of 2011. 
• I have started this blog, Rivera Runs Through It, written guest posts on blogs around the Internet and was invited to be a contributing author to The IH Brain Pain Blogs. 
• I have just started to begin to earn very small amounts of money (you never saw anyone get as excited as I did over $2 this past Valentine's Day), but I am now understanding how money can be made here. 
• ****I am doing all of this while on medical leave*** In other words, I about half as healthy as you are. I know that with just a little more effort - which would equal to that of someone working at this part time, or after work, real money could have been coming in by now.

So here's the real question: Where did I get my help? Simple - from the ProBlogger! Darren Rowse has been my professor in Blogging Basics, Blog Promotion, Building Audiences and even Finding Finances in Blogging. It's better than a degree in blogging because it is an ongoing conversation with a professional as you learn the ropes.

How to Learn About Blogging From THE Pro

1. Purchase Darren Rowse's eBook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. This is the single financial investment I have made into my blogging endeavor up until this point and it was well worth the twenty bucks. (It was announced that the price will be increasing to $29.95 on May 10, 2011. That still works out to be less than $1 per lesson and believe me each lesson can be revisited day after day!)
2. Follow the ProBlogger blog. This is free and extends all that is learned in the eBook.
3. Follow Darren Rowse on twitter @problogger
4. Come back and let me know how it is all going! 

Extra-Curricular Activities

While going through the ProBlogger program is not exactly the same as the time spent at university, there are still some extra-curriculars you should not ignore while obtaining your new knowledge:

• Become a blog reader
• Join blog communities (I, personally, love Blog Frog)
• Build your web presence using social media

Come to think of it, this is sounding just like college after all: engage in classroom conversations, join groups like fraternities, sororities, clubs or teams, and, above all - keep your social life bubbling!!

Well, thinking of it that way maybe we DO deserve a degree after all! And, guess what? I just found one on Amazon:

 

Blogging Blogger Blog Degree: Custom Gag Diploma Doctorate Certificate (Funny Customized Joke Gift - Novelty Item) 

I stand corrected. You CAN get a degree in blogging if you really want one. Just keep in mind, just like any degree, if you want it to really mean something, then you will have to do some work first!

Related Reading from Rivera Runs Through It:  
How Darren Rowse Has Forever Changed My Life in 10 Days


Graduate and diploma image by LuMaxArt and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License

How Darren Rowse Has Forever Changed My Life in 10 Days

I am in my 10th Day of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog program by Problogger Darren Rowse along with a bunch of ladies over in the SITS community. I have been working on it through my food blog, Searching for Sustenance, but have aspirations of bringing everything I learn there to this blog as well. The hostess of our group, Shelley, of the I'm Still Standing blog has challenged us to put to use what we have learned in one little post. I know I can't capture it all, so I will limit myself to one lesson per day... !0 Days, 10 Lessons, 10 (Blogging) Life Changers...

1. I will never ride the elevator with a stranger the same way again. I will constantly be thinking of how I can pitch them my idea and whether or not I can sell them on coming to my blog. I think every time I am in the elevator for the rest of my life, I will be rewriting a pitch!

2. I now think of the line, "The list is life," from Schindler's List in a completely different way. The list post is the life-line of my blog!

3. I am horribly and irrevocably addicted to StumbleUpon. I got on SU to help promote my own blog, but I really spend every day promoting the heck out of everyone and everything else. It keeps me up late at night stifling giggles like I am in Church in order to keep me from waking my husband. (My SU profile is NRivera9 if you would like to see how much stumbling I have done in such a short amount of time!).

4. I understand that I have a niche. Every blog has a niche. Whether we want to think so or not, the outside world is putting us into little categories, so pick one already and hope you see what the world does. Once you find your right niche, you will find your people.

5. I have come to the final conclusion that e-mail is still king. As wide as this web is and although it may seem that everyone loves the anonymity afforded them by mere screen to screen contact everyone seems to like the extra personal connection of an e-mail.

6. THERE IS NO WAY TO READ EVERYTHING ON DAY 6 ON DAY 6. If you are planning on someday doing 31DBBB, start reading now. Don't skip Day 6 (I did that my first go around), there is some incredibly invaluable information in there. (I am pretty sure I "stumbled" every post I read!)

7. I don't remember what Whitney Houston was singing about in the "Greatest Love of All" song, but I'll tell you one thing - I now know that linky-love is the greatest love of all of the Internet. If you write the right link post, aimed at the right audience, promoted the right way, you will see a traffic spike like NO OTHER. My link post Changing the Way We Eat: 1 Link At A Time written for day 7 was (and continues to be) INSANE.

8. I try to remember everything, because I understand my readers won't. It's not their fault - they might have only showed up last Tuesday, so I have to link back to the stuff I wrote last month, last week, last year. I am an interlinking fool now and it has been working!

9. I am Forum friendly and find myself commenting on articles in really big publications now leaving my name and website. I am pretty shy in real life, but out in the Internet I'm all up in everyone's business all of the time - offering advice, giving my opinions, and asking big questions. Whoa. Who am I?

10. Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are no longer the only alerts in my life. I have tons of columns opened up on my TweetDeck, I get daily e-mails on all types of subjects and I just keep geting inundated with more and more information. How did I ever struggle for a topic to write on?

That's it... for now. I've got 21 more days of this! I think my brain might implode!!