a cooking pot and twisted tales
Thoughts and Tales…A Lifestyle Blog with a Zing.
Maybe, just maybe when you spend less time minding other people’s business and more time minding yours, you might actually have more peace and make more progress in your life ‘cos when you stay in your lane, there’s less traffic to contend with.
Jacqueline
The maiden became the moon
lusciously ripe and full
her orbs spilt out of their confines
dark skin shiny, inviting and captivating
Intoxicating scents of the flower bushes
mingled with her fragrance of coconut and jasmine
filtering through the dark waves of night
causing him to pause at the mere sight
Bangles jingle as she dances bare feet
on the dewy grass of the valley
exultant and at ease with herself
undulating hips moved to her rhythm
Waist beads nestled low flashed with every step
the stirring in his loins as impure as his thoughts
and to have her as his own
perhaps, the greatest desire of his life.
©
Jacqueline
#blackisbeautiful, #thismelanin, #darkandproud, #celebratingblackness, #blackityblack, #waistbeads, #sensual, #Africanromance
We are not allowed to use an open grill in our apartment for safety reasons and this is one thing that I miss sorely. I recall Summer days of cook-out back in Houston, the camaraderie of family visits and it almost seems like aeons ago. Time flies.
Some parks allow the use of charcoal grill but the UAE is getting a tad too hot for such indulgence so, yours truly has to rely on my kitchens’ oven grill which is not quite the same.
Maybe it’s all in my mind right now – that flavour of sizzling barbecue wafting in from somewhere and causing saliva to pool in my mouth. Let me take a peek out of the window, maybe I’ll go begging for a bite 😉
You may wonder how important a business plan is for your blog and I must confess that as a beginner I wondered the same thing and I learned this the hard way after dabbling around with my first blog. Having a business plan for your blog is not mandatory, but if you regard your blog – or plan to do so – as a way to earn income, to grow your platform, to showcase your creativity and create a brand, then your blog is your business and creating a blog business plan is essential.
With this clarity on why you need a blog business plan, let’s go into the details of how to develop a simple, smart plan for your blog.
There are certain thoughts that you should have on your mind as you create your plan such as:
The platform (hosted or self-hosted) that you want your blog on – WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Others.
If you are self-hosting, consider how to get your domain name, how to buy hosting service, customizing and designing your blog and consider what the annual fees for maintaining your blog will be.
What are your three main goals for blogging? Identify them and use them as your focal point.
What will your blog subject focus be?
Who is your target audience and what are the possible solutions that you plan to offer to them?
When a reader visits your blog, what are the calls for action that you want them to take – Subscribe, buy, share etc?
How will you encourage them to take such action?
Search and study your competition. What is it that they are doing that you can learn from and possibly improve on.
How often will you update your blog? Think of your first ten blog posts, develop the content and come up with a list of focus keywords for your blog.
What are the strategies that you will use to increase your blogs’ SEO? Do you plan to run periodic promotions for your blog?
How will you measure your success? Think of the methods that you could use – Google Analytics, Email and RSS subscription, comments, and feedbacks. Read More…
As you first start out on your blogging journey, you don’t always know where it’s going to take you. First of all, it’s often going to be something you start as a hobby. Maybe you love a certain topic and you want to share your thoughts on it? Maybe you want to write, and so you start to write about anything and everything that you love. Maybe you’re a big blog reader and you just wanted to create your own little corner of the internet? When that’s the case, you can often fall in love with all things blogging. So much so, that you start to want to do it as a job. Or maybe you’re even getting a lot of hits and you really believe that you can turn it into a business. Either way, when you think that you’re ready to get serious about blogging, here’s what you need to do.
The first thing you need to think about doing is defining your brand. And this is crucial. If you want to turn your blogging hobby into a legitimate business, branding is the key. You need to figure out who you are and what you stand for, the build up a brand identity around that. Visually speaking, this will mean that your logo, your colours, and your fonts all need to fit in with the idea of who your brand is. Then you can start to brand everything you do and really establish yourself in a business sense.
From here, you then need to think about your marketing. Right now, it’s highly likely that you’ll have social media platforms that you share your content on. But now, you need to get serious. You need to market as much as possible and have a plan of what you want to achieve too. Think about why you’re marketing on each platform, who you’re reaching, and what you can do to add more value to the content that you’re putting out.
If you just tend to write from your bed or the couch, you need to change that. It’s time to cut out distractions and get focused on building your business. So clear out your spare room or attic space, put everything into storage like www.mybekins.com, and work on creating an office. Think about setting everything up so that you feel motivated to work and that you have everything you need around you to do a better job.
Then, you need to think about how you’re going to monetize. And take your time. Look into options like www.neilpatel.com and find out what will work best for you. Start off slow and then you should find that you start to earn real money by doing something you love.
Finally, you then need to think about where you want to take things. Work out what your overall goals are and then pull a business plan together. This is going to be that one step that helps you to get serious about your blog and turning it into a profitable career path.
Defer your judgement and keep possibilities open. When we judge everything: people, products, behaviour etc before we’ve had the opportunity to decide if they are good or bad we pigeonhole it and lock it down; we simply kill the opportunity for such possibilities to be.
My life is an ancient library
with time-worn tedious steps to climb;
inside are dark cavernous spaces
with old precious books of fine writing
but yet, there are still many plain pages
waiting to be written on.
©
Jacqueline
#itsneverdonetillitsdone, #unfinishedbusiness #aniconinthemaking #makingofamasterpiece
His words sound hollow,
filled with empty promises
that he never meant to fulfil.
Her eye’s look empty,
they have no life in them
life has beaten her hollow.
They make quite a couple,
she holds on to his empty words,
he digs extra holes in her hollow state.
This poem sprang to mind once I saw Linda’s prompt for today ’empty/hollow.’ It stole through the quagmire of thoughts battling for position in my head. Maybe this is a mirror of how I feel lately, empty and hollowed out? I can’t even make precise sense of this poem ‘cos most times my poem has a story behind it.
Have a good weekend peeps.
Jacqueline
Is it that I’ve become flea-bitten, cynical and jaded with time? I love love and romance and totally admire the couple, but the pomp and pageantry of the upcoming royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan barely cut through the hectic haze of my life at present and the reality of my bills. Am I the only one?
Through thick veneer of forgetfulness
and fragile memories worn by age,
thin slivers of deep-seated love
seeps through his fingers
to highlights her days.
©
Jacqueline
The Daily Post
a cooking pot and twisted tales 