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That’s when I decided to start blogging about my ideas. I had a good backlog of ideas to start up but it quickly got to a stage where my ideas ran thin, and for some reason I was not coming up with new ones as easily as before.

I tried to counteract this by expanding my focus. But as I tried to expand the blog to cater for ever wider audiences, I alienated the one person needed to make it a success, myself.

Problem 1: Categorization

By categorizing all my blog posts, I had inadvertently set my mind to only search for ideas in the given categories. This was a major problem because my idea process was like a wild horse and by taming it, it had lost it’s edge.

Solution 1: Narrow The Focus

To fix this I have narrowed my focus. The main focus of Cogroll was website ideas and it will return to that. There will be plenty of insight built into each idea that will help current website owners as well as beginners looking for their first project.

The category in itself has enough depth to keep me more than occupied: forums, blogs & affiliate sites to name just a few.

Problem 2: No Projects

By not developing my own projects, I lost the entrepreneurial edge. I was never searching for the next big idea, just for the next morsel of information for a blog post.

Solution 2: Resume Development

Instead of working solely on blogging, I plan to pursue side projects. This will open up my mind once more and should provide an almost unlimited resource of website ideas.

What does this mean for Cogroll

You might think that taking focus off the blog will make for less content. It couldn’t be more different. By removing my mental effort from Cogroll and trying to develop new projects, there will be more content ideas than ever before.

I will rewrite the about page shortly to encompass the changes, but in short Cogroll will:

• Focus more on website ideas.
• Keep posting available domain names.
• Target webmasters looking for projects.
• Include insight for current website owners (ideas that translate to your website).

More Guest Posting

Another major upside of doing this is that if I have any ideas that don’t fit my niche, they will become great material for guest posting.

I can get my name out there as an ideas man and bring new readers to the blog.

Final Tip: Think Outside The Box

Thinking outside the boundaries of your current project, can be a way to find that killer hook that you’ve been searching for. A lot of ideas can be modified and reformed to fit exactly with your current project, and improve it to no end.

What Did I Learn

I hope by reading this you can get some ideas for how to improve your blogging. An apt way to end would be a summary of what I have learned.

• Categorization can stifle creativity.
• As can trying to focus on too many categories.
• For me at least, only having one project can limit your ideas.
• Opening your mind to new projects can help improve your current project.

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Initially I wanted to make a service for hosting ‘dream-blogs’ - a place where you could record your dreams. It never panned out but you can see what I was trying to do, and what I maintain is the key to success – find a unique hook in a crowded niche.

As a result of my interest in making a hosted blog service, I have encountered some brilliantly brandable domain names. Today I have two domain names that could tie into one service - call it My Journal.

I don’t yet have a unique hook for it, that will be your job. What I do have is two incredible available domain names.

MyJNL.com could act as the service front page, while JNL.me could act as the hosting page – eg. james.jnl.me or jnl.me/james – A nice short domain that users can promote.

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Tip: If you are not based in America, a good idea to establish yourself in a busy niche is to target just your country. iPhone was a saturated niche, but by targetting ‘iPhone Australia’ I was able to generate much more traffic than I would have for a global iPhone site.

With that in mind, here are 4 technologies that are tipped to be big in 2010, and therefore present ideal opportunities as the topics of new websites, blogs and forums:

Nexus One

Released very recently, Google’s phone is sure to go global. It may not be an iPhone killer but there will be a big enough audience to get solid traffic to a blog or forum.

Apple Tablet

Apple’s next big release is rumoured (confirmed?) to be a tablet Mac. This announcement is expected on the 27th January so make sure you are available for the live broadcast so you can register those premium domains!

Home 3D

With the huge success of Avatar, 3D is now being given it’s share of attention. Plenty of 3D home entertainment systems were on show at CES and this is hotly tipped to be the next big thing.

eReaders

Amazon (due to Kindle) saw their digital books outsell physical books over Christmas. Most predict this will be the case over the course of 2010, and eReaders will become commonplace.

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Link it Up

It’s been a fairly quiet week (having just come out of the holiday period) but I have selected 3 articles that you should peruse:

• Daneblogger tells us how we can work around writer’s block (and I throw in my 2 cents).
  Link: How to Avoid Writer’s Block?
• It seems guest posting is getting a huge amount of coverage in the blogosphere lately and Teenius chimed in with a useful guest posting guide.
  Link: 8 Steps To A Perfect Guest Post
• Blogussion go back to basics and explain the benefits and process of adding a Favicon (I added one on Cogroll this week too. See it up there in the browser bar?).
  Link: Branding Battle: Favicon to the Rescue

What about Cogroll?

It’s not been too busy here either but here is some new stuff from this week:

• Most significantly I added Mini Ideas (with custom homepage styling) yesterday. Short ideas I want to share without necessarily going into a fully fledged article.
• I also made some other design changes: to the top navigation bar and a new banner on the homepage.
• I wrote a poorly titled post for a cracking new website idea, which puts a positive spin on to-do lists. It definitely didn’t get the readers it deserved, probably one of my favourite website ideas yet.
• I stepped into the world of ‘making money online as a designer’ and summarised 5 types of themes you should create for Theme Forest.

Sharing’s Caring

If you found any other great ideas or useful articles this week feel free to add them in the comments. It’s more than likely I’ve missed some great posts.

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The Solution

Introducing the ‘Achievement Log’. Instead of all your achievements just disappearing into thin air, list them in a blog-type site. Every time you do something, you write it down in your achievement log where it will be a visible reminder - to you and others - of exactly what you have been doing.

How To Make It

To create the Achievement Log website, Wordpress MU would be more than enough. Just change the default user theme to a simple list style blog and you can have your users posting their daily achievements in no time. A quick domain search reveals that achievelog.com is available - however there is definitely room for a slightly more creative name.

Conception

My idea for this site came about from wanting to keep blog readers informed of the latest changes. If I made a design tweak, I could post it in my achievement log where it would not only help the user understand the change, but also encourage the user to check it out - essentially getting more traffic.

Harness Twitter

It would also make sense to integrate such a tool into Twitter. Every time you post an achievement it is echoed as a tweet and notifies all your followers of your latest feat.

And Finally

At the end of the day, when you are winding down, you can read over your achievement log and feel good in yourself knowing that you have achieved all those things today.

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If this is your first time on the site, make sure you join the newsletter and subscribe to the RSS feed to get the latest domains and ideas as soon as they are posted. You can also find me on Twitter.

If you choose to register a name I just ask that you post in the comments section, and maybe give a bit of blurb about your ideas for the site.

5 Nexus Domain Names Available to Register

• nexushub.com
• nexustips.com
• preordernexus.com
• nexusbackgrounds.com
• nexuslounge.com

(Strikethrough means the domain has been registered.)

I have no idea of the legality of the names, and as such I accept no liability for any of them. As far as I know, Google only holds the trademark for the term ‘Nexus One’ and not ‘Nexus’. This is reflected in the list. Please seek further legal advice if you have any doubts.

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