I started a popular series of posts a few years ago called 5 Minute How Tos. These posts were a result of my own frustration with finding information about certain topics in a concise form that could easily be absorbed and made practical use of within just a few minutes.
There are so many sites out there that have volumes of information about particular topics that are simply too complex or take way too long to read and apply to a real world situation. The opposite is also true. There are many sites that give us a high level overview or maybe more of a cursory glance at a topic and don’t include enough detail to be useful. The 5 Minute How Tos are a reaction to both of these.
I have some ideas for some more short how to posts and you should start seeing them on this site soon. For now, I’ve put together a short summary below of each of the ones that I’ve already written.
- 5 Minute How To: Get Started With Blog Carnivals Blog Carnivals are a great way to get your posts noticed and get more traffic and links to your blog.
- 5 Minute How To: Find Your Blogging Voice Sometimes it’s difficult to establish your own particular identity. This post gives some tips on putting yourself into your writing.
- 5 Minute How To: Save Time With Future Posting If you find that you have bursts of creative productivity this is a great way to spread out those posts. It also comes in handy when you’re going on vacation or going to be tied up on other things for a while.
- 5 Minute How To: Find a Blogging Job If you’re curious about what it might take to get a paying job as a blogger, this post has some good information for you.
- 5 Minute How To: Redirect From a WWW Domain I found it necessary when moving my blog to redirect my old pages to the new ones, so that readers (and Google) could find me.
- 5 Minute How To: Improve Your Alexa Rank Alexa Rank is important for a few reasons, not least of them is the impact on the pricing of your (aff).
- 5 Minute How To: Get Started With AdSense This is where monetizing your sites begins. Everyone who has a web presence should have an adsense account and at least a passing familiarity with how to use it effectively to make money.
- 5 Minute How To: Get Started Programming with PHP Many bloggers use WordPress for their blogging software and since it’s based on PHP, this is a great tool to put in your web skills toolbox.
- 5 Minute How To: Drive More Traffic to Your Site These are some useful ideas for getting more eyes on your pages.
I hope you find this information useful. Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think. If you have any particular ideas or requests, I’d love to hear them.
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Good info good tips and suggestions. I tried to do some how to’s I guess I would call it. Sort of tutorials if you will. But my 5 min how to’s turn into 30 mins to 1 1/2 hours to write up and add images. Nice work though. Great looking site design and layout here by the way.
Hello! I really enjoyed reading this post. Also, you have a lot of nice and useful tips presented. Thanks for sharing!
Cheers
Thanks! It sometimes takes a bit of time to put it together, but I think it’s useful information without being too much. Most of the time, I’m just looking for a little bit of know-how to get me started or get past a hump. I put together these How Tos with the same thought in mind and hope people are getting something out of them.
Your right. Why do how to guides, especially the ones I start, end up becoming a how-to book. First and foremost I have found working with a great editor who knows how to condense ideas into solid, powerful bullet points to be a huge help. Secondly, I try to sketch out the ideas I want to get across, set it down for a day or so and then go back and see what can go. People do not have the attention span or time to want to read everything I might have to say on a subject, but I do think it’s a good idea to give links for the additional information should someone be THAT interested.
This was a nice idea, congratulations. However, the 5 minute how to about driving traffic to a website could use some updating, if you don’t mind me saying
Social networks are one of the best sources of traffic nowadays, for instance, and this is missing from the article.
Thanks a lot! Good information in a short way! Very helpful!