It’s taken me this long to catch my breath and put things into perspective.

Here are 31 lessons from blogging 31 days in a row:

1. Blogging every day is hard, otherwise more people would do it.

2. If it’s not a paid gig or a blog you run as a money-making venture, you really don’t need to blog every day – but a periodic challenge like a blogathon is a good way to focus on where your blog is today and how you want to make it better.

3. When it comes to ideas for posts, have a plan.

4. That plan could be as simple as a calendar for plotting out a month’s worth of posts at a time.

5. Any plan should have room for inspiration – you never know when you’ll read or see something and a fully formed post will pop into your head.

6. When inspiration strikes, write it down, preferably in drafts mode in your blog editor.

7. Pre-writing posts makes all the difference.

8.  If you post on weekends, pre-write Saturday and Sunday posts during the week – just because you’re posting every day doesn’t mean you have to write every day.

9. Theme days, where you write the same type of post on a certain day of the week, are an easy way to come up with material. On WordCount, I reserve Fridays for Recommended Reading posts, lists of interesting articles I’ve come upon that week.

10. Running more than one type of theme day per week is OK too. During the Blogathon, in addition to Friday’s Recommended Reading posts, I did Around the Blogathon posts on Saturdays to showcase interesting things other blogathoners had written that week, and Best of WordCount posts on Sundays, lists of older posts on a common subject.

11. If you’ve ever worked in the news business, you’ve had experience with daily deadlines and that gives you a leg up on the whole daily posting game – but it’s still hard.

12. Blogging every day is a great way to show a publication you’re applying to for a paid blogging gig you can handle deadlines.

13. All blog posts are not created equal.

14. It’s enough to do one or two long posts per week on an original concept or something you put a lot of reporting, thought or time into.

15. On the other days, shorter, less substantial posts are good enough.

16. Don’t discount the value of non-written blog posts. Pictures, video and graphics get an idea across as well or better than words.

17. Not every post has to be serious, but it’s harder than it looks to be funny (at least for me).

18. If you want comments ask for them – add a question to the end of a post asking readers to share their thoughts or experiences.

19. Run polls, people love to vote on things.

20. Hold special events. One of the highlights of this year’s blogathon was the day everybody wrote haiku.

21. Be part of a community. If you blog on a particular subject, find other bloggers who write about the same thing and introduce yourself.

22. If you want people to comment on your blog, comment on theirs.

23. Include links in your posts.

24. Make sure some of those links are to your older posts.

25. Use Twitter and Facebook to promote your blog posts.

26. But don’t use Twitter and Facebook only to promote your blog, too spam-y.

27. Keep blog post titles straightforward – get too cutesy and search engines won’t be able to figure out what your post is about.

28. But don’t worry about SEO too much – good quality writing trumps SEO-enabled copy any day of the week.

29. If you’re starting a blog, think long and hard about your blog’s name. Pick something memorable – not too long, not too short, and not something that’s already taken, so your blog doesn’t get mixed up with someone else’s. A tag line is good – it’s another clue to what the blog’s about.

30. It OK to write about your personal life – if you have something universal to share or your execution is dramatic, off beat or otherwise attention getting. Give people a reason to visit.

31. Check your blog stats to see the types of posts readers gravitate to so you can do more of them.

In case you missed it the first time, here are more reflections from writers and bloggers on what they learned from this year’s WordCount Blogathon.

Last week, freelance writer Kerry Dexter included WordCount in a list of 15 blogs to explore. She was continuing an experiment started by another writer/blogger friend who included Dexter’s blog in her own list of 15 ‘Lovely Blogs, after that blog had been included in someone else’s list.

Now it’s my turn.

When it comes to blogs, I regularly read a mashup of subjects I write about like technology, HR, Internet security and business, and blogs about what’s happening in the media industry – as you can imagine there are more and more of those these days. I also read a handful of blogs on writing, blogging, marketing and social media that influence my own writing and blogging.

Since I started using Twitter, I probably read more posts on random blogs than posts on blogs I subscribe to – but that’s a subject for another day.

Without further ado, here are the 15 blogs I read almost every day:

Media industry

• Romenesko – Hands down the most informative blog for what’s happening in the newspaper and magazine business.
• NewspaperDeathWatch – Another strong chronicler of what’s happening in the newspaper business, written by newspaper industry and social media expert Paul Gillin.
• PBSMediaShift – With the tagline, “Your guide to the digital media revolution,” host Mark Glaser is turning this into a multi-sourced must-read for what’s happening in digital media.

Writing and freelancing

• The Urban Muse – Susan Johnston, aka The Urban Muse, is the freelance writer I wish I was when I was starting out – smart and accessible, not above sharing her frustrations, foibles and successes.
• The Social Writer - Motley Fool writer Tim Beyers uses his blog to explore how writers can use the latest social media tools in pursuit of freelance happiness.
• Seth’s Blog – An old-school online marketer, if it’s possible to call anyone associated with interactive marketing old school, Seth Godin’s been around since Web 1.0 and it shows. With the tip of his bald head peaking out at readers, Godin’s like a Buddha, spouting short daily aphorisms on sales and marketing. Freelancers are in the business of selling, whether we like to think of ourselves that way or not, so why not draw inspiration from a master.

Social media

• ProBlogger – Instructive but not preachy advice on blogging. Whatever blogging difficulty you’re encountering – building traffic, looking for topics, getting readers to comment, etc. – chances are Darren Rowse and crew have covered it, from multiple angles.
• Mashable – Do I read this to stay current on what’s happening in social networks for the paid writing I do, or do I read it for the tips to get more out my own social media use? Probably a little bit of both.
• TwiTips – Not an everyday read, but definitely the first place I turn when figuring out something new on Twitter. (Note: I’ve written a guest column here.)

Business and technology

• Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist – If you read me you know I have a train wreck kind of fascination with Trunk. Yes she’s wildly inappropriate at times, but also an incredibly compelling blogger who tackles issues other people wouldn’t dream of, like her post connecting abortion and careers, which to date has received 370 comments.
• YourHRGuy – What’s not to like about Lance Haun – he knows HR, he brings a Gen Y perspective to workplace matters, he writes well, he’s in Portland, and he’s into sports and making sports analogies about HR issues.
• TechCrunch – Love him or hate him, Michael Arrington’s group-edited blog is the CNN Headlines News for Silicon Valley.
• ReadWriteWeb – Another group-edited blog covering the tech biz. While it might not have TechCrunch’s sizzle, or bite, it’s become another go-to source for breaking industry news – and anything with so many writers based in Portland is OK in my book.

Just for kicks

• The Cohens in DK – If I’m being totally honest here, some blogs I read just for fun. One is my sister’s about life as an expat wife living in Copenhagen, which will end soon because her husband’s been recalled to the States for a new position. This is as good an example as any I’ve come across of excellent writing from an amateur writer/blogger, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my sister.
• My daughter’s blog from college, which she started so she wouldn’t have to email or even call home about her adventures or, God forbid, friend me on Facebook. Sorry, this one’s not meant for public consumption so I’m not including the link.

I’m no fan of chain letters, so I won’t ask anyone to pick up the mantle and blog about the 15 blogs they read most often. But if you’ve got a couple favorites, feel free to share them here.

Some are enjoying it, and others finding it harder than they thought it would be. Some are getting creative – Sue Dickman devoted last Saturday’s blog post to making Wordle images from keywords on her blog, A Life Divided. Others have come up with clever ideas for standing features, like the Molecule of the Week feature Sarah Webb started for her blog, Webb of Science.

Since this is a self-directed experiment, all experiences are OK since they lead to better blogging skills and insights, which is the point of blogging on a regular basis anyway.

To keep things interesting, I’m declaring May 21 to be the official Blogathon Guest Post Day. Blogathon writers are invited to ask another freelancer to write that day’s blog post. Likewise, blogathoners should write a guest post on someone else’s blog. Depending on how you want to work it, you could swap posts with the same person, or trade posts within a larger group. I’ll also leave it up to you whether you trade guest posts with blogathon writers. Just have fun.

If you’re up for the challenge, make sure to extend an invitation to a prospective guest blogger early enough to give yourselves time to discuss what they’re going to write.

A few guest post housekeeping things to think about:

• If your guest blogger has a head shot or other picture of themselves in digital form, ask for a copy so you can run it with their guest post.
• Ask your guest blogger to write a short bio, or write one for them, to run with the post. Include links they might want  to their own website, blog or Twitter ID.
• If you’re writing a guest post somewhere else, write a short post on your own blog so your regular readers know where to find you. Blogs like WordPress let you create a sticky post to put at the top of your regular blog posts. Or you can create a small text box and run the information at the top of your blog’s left- or right-hand sidebar.
• As an example of what a guest post looks like, here’s a post I did earlier this week on the American Society of Business Publication Editors national blog.

Mark your calendars for May 21, and happy blogging.

There’s no getting around the fact daily blogging is work. But there are ways to minimize the extra effort. Writing short, planning ahead, mixing up the types of blog posts you write, creating standing features that run the same day every week -  they’re all paths to daily blogging bliss.

It may be a slog, but there’s a silver lining to posting every day. If you want to broaden your freelance repertoire, learning how to blog is the first step toward pitching yourself for paid blogging gigs. Fees for paid blogging assignments are all over the map, so it’s good to know how to write different kinds of posts, how long it takes to write a post and the basics of driving traffic to a blog, so you can take all that into account when negotiating  rates.

Whether you’re taking part in this blog’s 2nd annual May blogathon, or if you just want to learn how be a better blogger, here are 5 sure-fire strategies for coming up with posts every day:

1. Plan ahead – Let me start by saying, this is the hardest for me to do. I know some bloggers who write a week’s worth of posts at a time, and others who chart out what they’re going to write several weeks ahead of time. I don’t do that very often, normally just to cover myself for vacations. But even planning a few days worth of posts – or even just the next day’s post -  is a start. Especially if it gives you time to think ahead about what you want to say and collect URLs that might related to the subject you’re writing about. However, there’s something to be said for the spontaneous blog post, especially if you’re fired up over something and need to write about it while the idea’s fresh. If you’ve banked a number of pre-written posts on evergreen topics, there’s no harm in slipping a spontaneous post into the front of the queue.

2. Write short – If you’re blogging for yourself, you can decide how much or little to include in a single blog post. Some days you might feel like writing 500 or 1,000 words reacting to a news event or on a subject that’s close to your heart. Other days, you may just want to share a news story or blog post someone else has written with your readers, so your post could consist of a link to the original with a paragraph or two of explanation or commentary. Here are some other suggestions for writing short.

3. Mix it up – Unless your blog is set up to be something very specific – a recipe a day, a daily journal entry, all photos -you don’t have to write the same kind of blog post every time. In fact, mixing it up is a good way to get readers to keep coming back to see what you’re going to do next. In a typical blog, you could include:

• Commentary – Your POV on current events.
• Lists – Readers love ‘em.
• How tos – Learned something new? Share.
• Best ofs – A handful of older blog posts on a certain topic. I’ve use this to cover for vacations.
• Interviews – Some of my best-read posts are Q&As I do with other writers on a variety of writing related topics.
• Links – Lists of links to posts on blogs you read on the same subject as your own.
• Announcements – Tell the world when your articles, books or other work appear.
• Reviews – TV shows, movies, books, music, electronics, software, services – anything related to your blog’s theme.

4. Create standing features – A standing feature is a certain type of post that runs on a regular basis. On WordCount, I have two standing features, a weekly recap of highlights from the online media business that runs on Fridays, and a Q&A with freelance writers that runs on an irregular basis but about every 2 to 3 weeks. Standing features give a blog a sense of regularity, and readers come to expect and appreciate them them – and that’s what brings traffic back to your blog.

5. Pre-publish – As writers, we have deadlines. So some days are harder to devote to blogging than others. Blog software that let’s you pre-publish posts is made for those times. Write whatever posts you need to get ahead and use the publish feature to schedule when they’ll appear. This is also a great way to avoid blogging on the weekends, because really, nobody should work on the weekend, especially if you’re not getting paid for it.

Got your own secrets for writing one or more blog posts a day? Please share.

I’ve committed to posting on my blog Monday through Friday, an activity that takes 15 minutes to an hour a day depending on how ambitious I am about writing the post. Days like today I cobble together a post based on interesting posts I’d read on a topic elsewhere. Original writing takes longer, but sometimes I’m inspired and then the writing goes quickly.

I’m an early riser and I work on my blog first before starting the rest of what I have to do that day. I’m eight months into it and it’s become part of my work routine. But I’d have to say that some weeks I’m more into it than others. This week I have some major deadlines so the blog will get a minimum of my attention.

If you’re going to blog the most important thing is to pick a schedule and stick to it, whether that’s once a week, twice a week, etc. If people subscribe to the blog through a reader they’re going to expect posts on whatever schedule you’ve determined and if you don’t stick to it it’s easy to lose them. I know this because I subscribe to a couple blogs and when old posts sit in my reader after I expect to see new stuff I’m disappointed. It’s like seeing headlines from last week’s newspaper: boring.

As for social networks, I’m most active on Freelance Success, then LinkedIn, then Facebook, which I just joined and haven’t really spent much time on.

I’ve become a big fan of the LinkedIn’s status report, which is LinkedIn’s answer to Twitter. The status report is that little box on the Home page that lets you answer the question: What are you working on? The number of characters you can use is finite so you can’t ramble. But it is enough to say “I’ve just updated my profile, check it out!”

More about time spent blogging: In a 2006 study, the University of Massachusetts found that 65 percent of bloggers spent an hour or less while the rest spent up to four hours. Read more results from the study here.

For Tim Ferriss, less is more. The blogger and author of the best seller The 4-Hour Work Week, advocates in this post, The top 5 uncommon timesavers for bloggers for blogging only a couple times a week so your posts have time to percolate and get picked up around the blogosphere – definitely food for thought.

Time spent on this post: 30 minutes. How much time do you spend blogging?

Some bloggers happily put ads on their blogs and earn some level of revenue from it. But many said it wasn’t worth the time or trouble. They believe there are better ways to make money from a blog – read on to find out what they’re talking about:

Advertising Has Been Good to Me

The consensus of bloggers who like advertising is this: if you’re going to put ads on your blog, Google AdSense is the way to go. According to Google, when you sign up for AdSense, the service matches ads to your site’s content, and you earn money when visitors click on them.

AdSense “is the simplest and quickest way to start selling advertising on your blog, says JaWar, an Atlanta entrepreneur, author and keeper of multiple blogs on music and making money online. Just how much ad revenue you generate depends on how much traffic your blog gets, and that depends on how well you’ve used search engine optimization so search engines find your posts, he says. If your blog becomes very popular you may even consider selling advertising spots on it directly, he says.

Robin Capper attracts enough advertising on his computer-aided design and personal blogs to cover his blog hosting costs, and the remainder he donates to Kiva, a person-to-person microloan service, saying “It maybe enough to change someone else’s life.”

Melanie Stone Perry has never put ads on Mistress of the Dorkness, the blog devoted to CAD technology she’s written since 2005. But Perry’s starting a new blog (it’s not up and running yet so I won’t share the URL) she hopes will reach a wider audience. On that, she’s taking the advertising plunge. She’d like to duplicate “non-annoying” ads she sees on other blogs.

James Burchill, a Web marketing and social media expert and blogger with a print publishing background, favors advertising. But he eschews AdSense in favor of acting as his own advertising sales rep, offering select advertising opportunities at varying rates. “A small site with a loyal following can generate the publisher hundreds of dollars a month in simple ads,” Burchill says. The money may not be enough to quit your day job, “but if you had a network of these?” Another advantage of advertising: well-done ads show your bog isn’t just a hobby, he says.

If you choose to advertise, stick with it. Lubna Kably, a tax consultant and newspaper columnist in Mysore, India, put AdSense on her blog but forgot the password and then didn’t bother to take the old stuff off the site. Oops.

Sell Something Else

Writers are better off using their blog to promote something they’ve written such as a book or e-book, says Owen Linderholm, editorial director for a San Francisco online media company. “Better still is to use the site to promote yourself, your writing and your editing. That could result in lots of business that is worth far more than the advertising ever could be,” Linderholm says.

Frank Derfler, author of 22 technical books, used AdSense on his blogs Mostly Flying and Great Guy Books and signed up for Amazon.com’s Affiliate Program. Bottom line: “Revenue started out very low and is presently sitting at darn near nothing,” he says. “If (people) want to buy from Amazon, they will go to Amazon to buy.” Bloggers are better off developing their own thing to sell, whether it’s a craft item, information or something in multi-level-marketing. “It will have better return on your investment,” he says.

One blogger who followed that path is Andrew Ian Dodge, a freelance writer and game designer whose Dodgeblogium blog mixes heavy metal music with heavy metal politics. Dodge used to put ads on the site “and they were bloody useless,” he says. Now the only ads he runs are of his own book and music CDs.

UPDATE: I should have made this point before. If you use WordPress.com, you cannot put advertising on your blog unless you pay for the VIP service, which costs $500/mo. and is mainly used by national media companies and big-name bloggers. However, you could include advertising if you had a blog on a Web host of your own choosing and downloaded the free software from WordPress.org. You can use AdSense on blogs hosted by Blogger.com. You can ads from several ad networks on blogs hosted by TypePad.

The WordCount May blogathon is six days old and I’m excited to say that 22 freelance writers have taken up the challenge of blogging every day this month. A few signed up late, so I’m listing them here, and also to the original list that ran on May 1.

Leah Ingram - The Lean Green Family (formerly Suddenly Frugal), all about living frugally and green.

Dara Chadwick – Fit in Real Life.

In honor of the blogathon, I’ve revamped the links section of this blog. I streamlined the categories, and will be adding names of all the freelance writers participating in the May blogathon, as well as others whose work I know or like.

I also updated the Clips page to include stories that came out this month, including pieces in Oregon Business, IncTechnology.com, and YourSecurityResource.com.

Next on my housekeeping list is a design update – but don’t hold your breath!