Public Domain

Most artwork is copyright protected, which means you can't use it without permission and that usually means paying for the right to use it -- on your website, on a coffee mug, whatever.

But, if you look you can find public domain artwork. Public domain just means you can use the works in your own work (website, coffee mug art, etc).

Here's some public domain playing card artwork.

Generating content for a blog?

My Diet and Sugar blog looks like it has potential. So I'm going to have to look into this deeper.

My first goal is to try to attract some traffic. There are a lot of ways to attract traffic. My preference is simply content. That can be hard to do, but I think that is what pays off in the long run. Content that lasts can be a nice annuity.

My background is in operations research and I have a successful blog that combines an interest in that field and an interest in poker called Math and Poker. Operations research is an applied math field that's about things like optimization theory.

One thing I sometimes try to do is blog on subjects that have overlap potential. An old problem in operations research is called The Diet Problem. That's a mathematical formulation of a minimum cost diet that provides needed nutrients.

I decided to start working on The Diet Problem for the special case of diabetics with hypertension and kidney problems -- which is my current health situation. Boom, I all of a sudden got really prolific on blog posts for Diet and Sugar. It seems to pay off to stumble on a topic that I have both an expertise in and a special personal interest in.

Working on revenue improvement for Diet and Sugar has a twofold benefit. It has the direct effect of improving the revenue stream from that blog. But it also has the potentially beneficial effect of providing material for this blog. This blog gets almost no traffic and hasn't made me a nickel in the last few months. Maybe actually posting some content will help here too. You never can tell.

The importance of having a voice and sticking to it

BloggingTips has a post on Top 10 mistakes new bloggers make.

Four of the ten mistakes he lists are variations of the general theme of the importance of having a unique and consistent voice. That should indicate to you how important that is.

It's a mistake to
Repeat what other bloggers are saying It's good to talk about the same topics other bloggers are talking about. It's not good to just parrot the thoughts of others. If you don't have something unique to add to the conversation then don't bother.
It's a mistake to
Be afraid to rock the boat. It's okay to voice unpopular opinions if you can back them up. In fact it's not just okay, it's one of the best ways to get your voice heard.
It's a mistake to
Spam other blogs with comments. Make yourself noticed with a few comments on other blogs. But don't call attention to yourself as a bore with nothing to say.
It's a mistake to
Blog on too many subjects. Stick to a focuses subject that you have a consistent point-of-view on. You want your readers to know what to expect and to get what they expect.

Read the whole post for the other common mistakes.

Write to publish

I have a habit of writing short thoughts on random pieces of paper.

Then, later, sometimes years later, I'll go through a pile of old pieces of paper and try to figure out what I was thinking.

The title of this post is a phrase that was on one of those pieces of paper.

I'm not sure what it means. But I think it means something.

If it does mean something (and I'm not 100% sure it does) then it probably has some kind of application to blog writing.

If nothing else it got a blog post written.