Is it wrong to break rules? When you read this post, the first thing comes in your mind is drinking and driving. Breaking the rules but ofcourse that is wrong. Breaking the rules in this context is not following the rest of bloggers. If everyone is doing it do you have to do it? No… There is nothing wrong with trying new things.

There are three types of people in the world according to my theory.

First type is – The person who listens to other’s advice and wisdom and make his decision wisely.

Second type is – The person who listens to other’s advice and wisdom and still do the thing he is not suppose to and he failes. Than he learn from his own mistake.

Third type is – The person who listens to other’s advice and wisdom and still do the thing he is not suppose to, and even when he fails he tries it again.

Now which type are you? I am a mixture of both one and two. I listen to alot of people’s advices but sometimes I think I can do things better than the ones before me therefore I try them. I don’t always fail because I do it Different.

The entire idea of this post is to be different is not weird.

The idea of this post is to inspire more ideas in your brain. We will do it through an exercise I will mention in this post. We will analyze our methods to see what are we doing that is working and what should we add onto it.

Most of the top bloggers care about their readership, but how many actually care about doing a link round up? How many care about giving away stuff to their users? Sometimes YES, but not all the times.

I am giving a free wordpress blog design every month to my subscriber via Pimp My Blog. I am doing free reviews for the blog of my commentators. Am I wrong? Ofcourse not. I can do whatever I want to make my readers happy. But thats not how other famous bloggers are running their blog..

Am I making a mistake? Ofcourse not.

People the key is to read other’s blog learn from it, but don’t be a follower. Be a leader. It is good to have relationships among bloggers, but we don’t want to run a crappy system which everyone follows because than all blogs will look the same.

So if John Chow is making 30,000 / month because he have Kontera (which looks ugly) should you get one too? Well no you don’t have to. Make your own choices. Don’t let others influence you.

Another thing I have been seeing is that people are hesitant of trying out new things. Like Scour, or Plurk. Why are you waiting? Who are you waiting for?

Let me tell you what waiting does.. One you loose the early potential. See if you join Plurk now while it is still small, the chances of you referring more people and getting your Karma is high. So more people will be in your network, but if you just follow the crowd and enter later, you will not benefit as much as people before you did.

So than you will head over to blogs which praised Plurk so much, and then you will say. I didn’t recieve any traffic. That is because you were too late. Try to be the first one if you can’t be the first than definately don’t be in the last ones.

So never be afraid to join new services or try new things. Now think of all the things that you have done on your site that you haven’t seen many others do.

That is the first step. Now think of whether it has worked for you or not.

If it did not work for you, what can you do better?

If it did work for you how are you plan on improving it?

For example:

My Unique Project: Pimp My Blog

Did it work: YES because I have over 660 subscribers to this blog.

What am I adding: Well I have added the free review session as Balkhis Reader love. I have also added Link Love (but it is not so unique). But reader love is something that Balkhis is doing. I am planning on adding new things as time comes but I haven’t think of any yet.

Now share yours, so we can all see where you are in your career of blogging.

While the title of this post seems a little bit unrelated right now but after reading this post you will see my point. Lately, I have been very stressed out. Why? Because I am overworking myself. This Blog, Local Business, other projects and more. In the past few days I saw myself a bit unproductive. My work rate was slowing down. Creative ideas wasn’t hitting my mind. Until my mom and friends pointed out my daily schedule and how it is getting weird. Than I started analyzing myself. I came up with the list of my unhealthy habits that is effecting my productivity in blogging and working online. Good thing is that I caught myself early before the damage can be severe. Read the tips so you can avoid these things.

1) Lack of Sleep – Sleeping was not something that I was considering as a necessity. With excessive amount of work and meetings, I was postponing blog post and other work to later in the night when everyone else is sleeping. Now my schedule was something like this: I work in the day such as go outside and meet clients. I come home work on the computer a bit. Take care of designing orders. At Night I work until 6 a.m or so. Thats actually the morning. I take a nap and get back up around 10. So in 24 hours, I was only getting 4 hours of sleep. Yikes.. 20 hours of hard work. VERY Unhealthy.

2) Caffeine Intake – is also something that I was heavily relying on so I can continue my normal routine. I was drinking atleast one energy drinks a day. Sometimes Redbull other times Monster. I was drinking nearly 24oz. of Soda. 2 cups of Coffee in the morning and one cup in the evening. That is alot of Caffeine there!!! I was up all day running around, and I crash sleep for 4 hours. But during the caffeine intake there was another thing that I was lacking. I wasn’t getting hungry…

3) Anorexic Behavior – Well since I was taking so much caffeine, I wasn’t eating alot because I never feel hungry. So I have coffee than I have soda, no space for food. I was only having one real meal in the day. Which was impacting my attitude alot. It was fine for a first few days, but than I was losing energy.

4) Unhealthy Diet – Aside from one real meal. I was eating alot of snacks. Ofcourse Junk Food. Sometimes it was choclate, other times chips, doughnuts, french fries. Nothing really healthy. I wasn’t eating these foods while I was relaxed. Usually these were my breakfast. Except for French Fries, but the rest was my breakfast which I was having in the car.

5) Lack of Exercise – I wasn’t moving alot. I get up and use the computer, leave for the meeting which I drive to. Than I meet with clients in their office so I sit there. I come home and have lunch. Than I get back to work, and I am still sitting. All the Junk food, no exercise. I am starting to gain weight. Feeling sick to my stomach sometimes.

6) Lack of Social Life – While I was continuing my routine, I was losing my social life. The most social thing I did was Plurk. Most of my plurks were about myself having headaches. If my friends or family comes over, they never really find me in a good attitude. I was always exhausted. I was not going to alot of places. And if I did go, I was busy with phone calls. So I was constantly stressed.

7) Avoding the signs – I was avoiding every symptom my body was trying to give me. I would crash every night badly. I was feeling sick to my stomach almost every day. I have headaches all the time. I couldn’t think of creative ideas when I was designing.

All came down to me breaking down. I had a headache all day, not feeling good. I couldn’t work straight. Couldn’t write a good post. I am not talking to anyone in the family. Until my friends and my mom started asking me whats going on. You haven’t been eating lately. You are acting different. Than I started looking into my daily life style, and I found all of the problems above.

I wasn’t being very productive at what I was doing. My blog posts were suffering. I was pushing myself to do too much. I started slowing down. I got back to my normal routine and things started to get better. Than I wrote two successful posts back to back. One was 13 ways I used to promote my blog to success, and the other was about Vlogging 101 – Guide to make all type of Videos.

Now I am on routine which I will try to balance from now on. Here is what I think is necessary for a webmaster to be productive

Good NIGHT Sleep – I noticed that when I was getting night sleep it is much more relaxing. Because people in the house are not making noises. Specially because I have a little brother who is 4. So I can’t have a restful sleep during days. Therefore Night sleeps are necessary.

Well Planned out Meals – Personally I think the food pyramid is BS. So just pick your meals wisely. Some proteins, fruits, carbs. Have atleast 3 meals in day on the right times. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Snack here and there.

Exercise – Exercise keeps your mind fresh. It gives your body the workout it needs and keep you in good shape. So you will not have overweight problem. I am sure if I had continued my schedule, you would see me as another obese person. Than I will be blogging about how to loose weights and things that I am trying. lol

Socializing – Family time with family is a must. You don’t know how much you miss when you don’t interact with your family. Alot of my post ideas come from my family. Like this one was suggested my mother. Socializing with your friends is another thing that is needed. You need to go out and have fun. Can’t work all day. Relax your brain a little.

Limit your Caffeine intake – Caffeine is like something that your body just want more and more. Today one red bull might be enough, but tomorrow you would need 2 to do the same amount of work. The synergistic effect comes in play. I am not saying don’t drink coffee because I know I can’t operate without it, but limit your caffiene intake. Don’t drink excessive amount of sodas because you are gaining alot of useless calories also.

Do the following and you will see the difference. Now I find the energy to write longer and more useful posts. Better quality because I have the energy to do so. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me.

Disclaimer: I am no health professional. I am just sharing my experience with you guys so you don’t do the things that I have done. For health advice please consult a professional. While I understand I am pursuing a career in medicine, I don’t have my degree yet, and for me to give health advices is against the U.S Law because that is practicing medicine without a license.

Angadsodhi is a regular reader on this blog, and I have been checking out his blog lately so therefore I have decided to review his blog because of the reader love on Balkhis.

Angad’s blog is a personal blog which is crowded with advertisement. I like the way he shares his information. Alot of the articles there are interesting because they are from various different sources. But there are several tips that I will be giving in this post to Angad.

Before I start with that, I want to say that the content on this site is very interesting. Posts on this blog are also being displayed in an orderly fashion. The design of the site is decent for a personal blog. You should get a better banner on the header for the empty ad spot. A banner that is eye catching.

Few things that I noticed that needs to be fixed urgently are: the over advertisement. You have too many ads in the sidebar. I scroll down the sidebar and I see ads and content. Sidebar ads are more prominent than the sidebar content.

As you see I have commented on your blog multiple times. You have comment relish installed, but for some reason it is not working correctly. I got the thank you email after every single comment. After 3 I stopped because I didn’t want to get any more emails.

Work on the footer. On pages like this it comes all the way to the top in IE 7.0. Only browser I checked in. Make the footer below the sidebar, so it looks like a footer.

Pagination needs to be somewhere better. I just don’t like the style. Even if you leave the pagination the way it is, take care of the problem on this page. Because pagination box is blank.

I like the idea of your Best Posts. I liked the comic one as well.

I understand that you want to make money off your personal blog, but keep the advertisement to a limit.

I am not doing reviews in great details so these are the quick things I noticed on your blog Angad.

Guys visit his blog, it is cool and he is a fellow reader here at Balkhis.

Visit AngadSodhi.com

Usually it is called Blogging, but adding videos to it makes it Vlogging. Don’t you think so? Well, I have mentioned it multiple times that images add life to your blog. But imagine how much life does video adds to your blog? It gives your blog the legs to walk. Videos add personality to your blog. Now your users can hear you and see you. It doesn’t matter how you look… How you sound… Your reader knows who they are dealing with. It makes good relations between you and your reader. Besides no word tutorial can do a better job than a video tutorial. The point I am trying to get across is add videos to your blog. Let your reader know a little more about you.

In this post I will show you how to record videos for your blog. How you can record your desktop. Where you can upload your videos and how to promote them. Read the post to find out.

First thing you need is a video. To get that you need a Video Camera. I will not add my own affiliate links. All you need is a decent digital camera. So I am assuming you have a video camera.

Now turn it on and start recording. Lights, Camera……. ACTION

Make sure you have the camera in the right position. Preferably in the position described above.

Who is making the movie?

Determine who will be making the movie. I prefer to have someone making the video. So I ask family members or friends to make a video for me. Why? Simply because they can get a better angle. But if I am not making a video of myself, than it is much easier because I can be the moviemaker.

How Can you make your own video without someone else’s help?

Can you really? Read the entire article to see some useful tips.

After seeing this on multiple blogs and having it recommended by many other friend bloggers, I am going to adapt to Link Roundup and experiment this. I am calling this even Sweet Monday Link Roundup and the posts displayed will be from my favorite blogs, blogs that I read alot.

Kicking of the first link roundup is

Smashing Magazine’s study on Big Blogs. Excellent read, but you can just get the basic idea by scrolling down and reading the Bottom Line.

My friend Nabil over at Enkay Blog wrote a very good post about the title selection of posts. It is a very good read, and I can second that blog post. Having a good title is the key to recieve alot of traffic to that blog post.

My friend on many different social networks and a very famous blogger, Darren Rowse is asking a simple question. How Long Do you take to write a post?. Care to answer?

Jim over at TheNetfool is teaching you how to use images in your blog post. Images give life to your blog, and I am sure you have heard the saying, picture speaks a thousand words. Give your post some life by reading Jim’s Strategies.

Regular Reader and a friend of mine at Thoushallblog is sharing How Did Google Calculate YOUR Pagerank. If you are a PR Junkie read that. Its a good read.

A good friend that I met on Plurk who is from my Birth City and a year younger than me Muhammad Siyab is a very passionate writer. His writing style is very interesting. Check out his post about Ambition: Too Much Of It – Black Holes That Bloggers Get Trapped Into #1.

My regular reader who owns Networking Blogger has written a very good guide to buy Web Hosting. I will say if you are looking for webhosting check it out.

Another one of my reader’s here at Balkhis wrote a good post about AdSense Myths and Cures. It is interesting as I will say.

One of my favorite blogs, Zac Johnson shares a very interesting post about colors in the design, and how it relates to affiliate marketing. Now you have to go read the post to see why Blue is my favorite color and both Balkhis and Uzzz Productions are blue.

Rockstar Sid another Balkhis reader have a good post called Simple Stumbleupon tips to Generate Traffic.

With that I conclude the first Sweet Monday Link Roundup.

If you are looking to kick your week off then take a look at some of these interesting reads.