I hope all is well with everyone.

The contest over at WinningTheWeb ended with a huge bang!

I was one of the lucky winners and happened to win 2 great prizes:

• $100 Cash courtesy of The Social Millionaire

• OIO Publisher account ($37 dollar value)

Earlier in the week, I happened to win money over at PerfectBlogging for being one of the top commenters. I put some effort into being a top commenter over at PerfectBlogging because they have a fair amount of RSS subscribers (450 +) and probably a fair amount of website traffic. I figured why not be a top commenter, get some extra exposure for my blog, and give myself a chance to win money?

• At PerfectBlogging.Com, I ended up winning $25 dollars.

Winning these prizes feels great: I’m glad that I participated and hope everyone that participated enjoyed the contests! It has been an awesome week for me :)

In case you all are wondering what I’ve been up to lately:

I have written a fairly large post that was scheduled to be posted for today, but I’ve decided to save it for the weekend. Also, due to the huge increase in success over at my other projects, I’ve decided to not stick to a specific posting frequency here. I will be blogging here when I feel it appropriately fits my schedule. I don’t want to leave my readers puzzled here not knowing my posting frequency: I will keep you all updated. I recommend that you all stay subscribed or subscribe to my feed if you haven’t already and make it easy for yourself to check for new posts!

There are an estimated $15,000 in total prizes including: cash-money, 1 iPod Touch, tons of advertising on popular blogs, internet marketing training, memberships, an affiliate summit east pass, web site subscriptions, blog themes and many more. The list is insanely long for me to recap.  Gyutae’s contest has increased the subscriber count over at WTW from under 400 to nearly 900 in less than 1 month!  This contest has been a lot of fun for me to participate in and I hope everyone else feels the same.

By the way, in case you didn’t already know, Gyutae has added a black H2 Hummer to the prize pool on the last day of the contest (April 1, 2008). The total prize value of the contest is really $71,435 dollars. Be sure to at least give yourself a chance to win that Hummer and sign up today.

Early in the week, I discussed How To Increase Your Blogging Speed. This article is a must -read for anyone looking to boost their productivity as a blogger. Being efficient with blogging is a huge timesaver and frees up more time to focus on other areas of life. In this article, I highlight several tips that everyone should try!

Next, I discuss How I Get The Job Done & What Works Best For Me. This post was inspired by Dale’s comment stating that he would enjoy me to elaborate on what works best for me. I discuss why I currently blog late at night and why I’d like to change my blogging routine to “early morning.” Check out this article and see if some of the same things work for you!

Later in the week I asked the question: “If You Won The Lottery Would You Still Blog?” With this article I let my readers know what I would do with my blogging career if I happened to hit the jackpot. I talk once again why it is important to be passionate about your blogging niche and why you’d probably quit blogging if you didn’t choose a true niche of interest. I highly encourage you to read over this post and share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section!

Next, I touch on Video Blogging & Why You Should Take Advantage Of The Growing Trend. I’m beginning to see a lot of video bloggers that have increased their success by incorporating video into their blogs. Within this post, I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of video blogging and why you should consider giving it a shot. I encourage you to give video blogging a try if you haven’t already!

To cap of week #7, I let my readers know that I will be “Cutting Back On Posting Frequency: Just A Little Bit.” Don’t worry, I’m not bailing out on this blog, I just need some time to dedicate towards my other projects too. I think posting every-other day is a good frequency for this blog and felt it necessary to let my readers know of the change.

Other honorable blogging articles:

• Alan Johnson compiled a list of the most useful 1001 webmaster resources. It must’ve taken awhile to compile and the sheer volume really impressed me!

• Cuzzy, one of our most active members asks if you went dark for “Earth hour.” Be sure to stop by and participate in his poll!

• Kevin Givens, another active member, touched on the top characteristics of a successful entrepreneur.

• Dennis Edell, another comment contributor has applied a nice physics lesson to business and discusses why you should never stop pushing your business forward.

This concludes week #7 of the Weekly Milestones section. I recommend checking out all of my articles and providing your brain with as much blogging knowledge as possible to help yourself improve! Want to get mentioned in a future weekly wrap-up? Becoming an active member of Andrew Pavelski dot com will increase your chances ;) When you become a regular contributor to the comments section, I will dig through your blog and possibly share link-love with a post that I enjoyed. Especially if it is relevant to my niche!

Why I’ve decided to cut back on my posting frequency

• My other projects - The main reason that I’m changing my posting frequency is to dedicate some more of my time to my other projects. If anything major happens at another one of my blogs (it kind of has already), I’ll definitely share some insight here at Andrew Pavelski dot com. As I mentioned before, I probably won’t share the URL’s of my other projects quite yet because they are of completely different niches than this site and I don’t want any conflicting views or opinions. If you happen to come across my other sites on your own - wonderful ;)

• Balancing blogging with life - One area of life that I’ve really been slacking on lately is exercise and diet. I enjoy eating three full meals per day and taking time for exercising. Though I may currently look “in shape” and “fit,” I haven’t gotten a good workout for awhile…

• Writing guest posts - Writing guest posts on other blogs is something I’ve been aiming to do with this blog (and my other blogs) and I think cutting back on posting for a day will hopefully free up some time for me to write a guest post for a bigger blog like John Chow.

• More time for promotion - Promotion takes time and needs to be balanced with the production of quality content. Too much of one will defeat the purpose of the other. Too much promotion will get you traffic, but the traffic will never return if they don’t think you’ve got worthy content. On the other hand, too much quality content without enough promotion will make for an awesome website that nobody knows about. Keeping a balance is important and I’m hoping that my new schedule will give me more time for promotion.

What is my new posting frequency?

• Every other day - Look forward to a new blog post every-other day on Andrew Pavelski dot com. I have some really great experiments and ideas that I plan on sharing with you all at this blog, so be sure to stay tuned and keep checking up!

Why did I let you all know of the change?

• To be courteous - I think it is appropriate to be courteous and let your readers know if you plan on changing your posting frequency.

• To avoid confusion - I don’t want you to get confused and think that my blog died or that I’ve become a slacker. Since I was posting everyday for awhile - you may have really wondered why I cut back or gotten confused.

Whether you enjoy video blogging or not, it is a thing of the future and is currently being utilized by many bloggers across the net to give them an edge on their competitors. People cannot get enough of Darren Rowse’s videos over at Problogger.net and many bloggers are starting to realize that creating a video can be a pretty valuable tool to help promote their website or blog. Though I’ve never personally created a video, I have thought more about how the use of a webcam has revolutionized blogging and has proved to be a great medium for bloggers to share their advice through. If you haven’t considered making a video to help boost your blogging career and promote your website, you may want to seriously reconsider! There are so many benefits that video blogging has to offer, that you’d be really missing out if you never give it a shot.

What’s required for video blogging:

1. A webcam - The only thing that’s required for a video blog is a webcam. Many computers come with cameras and many of the newer laptops have webcams built right in. The newer Mac computers even has an option to export your video directly to YouTube after recording.
2. A willing person - Not everyone is willing to put themselves infront of the camera. Some people are shy and may be afraid to put themselves out across the web. The most important part of video blogging is your willingness to get yourself more exposure: you’ve got to be willing to step up, be confident, and not really care what others may think of your appearance.

The advantages of video blogging:

• Most visitors would rather “watch” than “read” - Let’s face it, the majority of people would rather watch someone talk rather than read an article. Since the majority of people would rather watch videos than read, video blogging has become extremely popular. Society is becoming more fast paced and ADHD than ever before. Though I enjoy doing a fair share of blog reading, I’ll admit that blogging videos really capture my attention.

• Bloggers don’t like writing - Some bloggers really enjoy writing and would gladly showcase their writing skills rather than make a video appearance. However, many online bloggers don’t really particularly enjoy the writing aspect of blogging. You don’t necessarily need to enjoy writing to enjoy blogging. Why force yourself to write if it isn’t one of your strengths?

• It’s relatively easy to do - Recording a video is extremely easy to do. All it requires is: knowing your topic, recording of yourself talking, and uploading the video to your blog. It’s a very easy process and is much easier than putting your words into text. Speech is much quicker and more efficient than writing and comes naturally for a lot of people.

• It is much quicker than actually writing - The majority of bloggers that I know like to be quick and sustain a good level of efficiency. If all you need to do is flip a switch to turn on a webcam, press record, and talk for 15 minutes about a topic relevant to your blog, you will save a ton of time vs. writing a lengthy article that takes over 1 hour. With video blogging, there’s no need for editing misspelled words and grammatical mistakes. Writing articles can be a very time consuming process: especially if you aren’t a very good writer - video blogging is a great option!

• People enjoy getting a 1-on-1 talk - Video blogging is great because it gives your visitors a 1-on-1 feel with you as a blogger. It can really make them feel as if you are giving them a “personal lesson” or private advice. Not only do people enjoy getting a visual of you as a blogger, they enjoy hearing your voice to associate with your face. The combination of visuals and audio really provides them with a much better sensory experience than reading text.

• Videos are relatively easy to promote (i.e. YouTube) - All it takes is one catchy video, or even a highly informative video, to gain quick popularity on YouTube. All a good video really takes is a thumbs up on StumbleUpon, a contribution from the Digg community, and it has the potential to dominate social networking websites and draw some serious traffic to your website. Videos are very easy to promote and there are a number of websites that you can submit your video to.

• Gives your website an advantage - If your website happens to offer some nice blogging video in addition to great written content, while your competitors are only offering written content, who has the advantage?  YOU do.  Because you are enriching visitors’ experience more than other blogs, you have an advantage.  Anytime you can offer a great service that others aren’t currently offering, you will have the “edge” on your competition.  When written content can be found on every blog, yet video can only be found on some, which websites get extra attention?  Obviously the one’s that offer video.

• You can make some serious cash - If you make a really high-quality video and submit it to metacafe, you can earn some serious cash. This guy Kipkay who shows you various really sweet hacks has racked up quite a bit of money. The way to make money in any field is to provide value: if you expect to make money from your videos, they’ve got to have some sort of value. What can you do to provide value in your videos and earn some cash? You can share helpful information, a unique personality, insights, make people laugh, etc.

The disadvantages of video blogging:

• Some people are “camera shy” - For the people that are camera shy, making a video to promote your blog may be out of the question. Writing is much less intrusive into a bloggers identity and gives away much less information. Some people may not be huge fans of creating an online video and enjoy the feeling of being anonymous that comes with Though I don’t think you should allow shyness to hold you back from creating a video, you should be confident about making the video.

• Appearance may play a role - Level of attractiveness usually plays a role in every area of life whether you like it or not. Exposing your appearance to others can in fact ruin any preconceived notions that they may have about your appearance. I personally don’t judge anyone by how their appearance, but many people do. Unfortunately, if people think you look less attractive than someone else, they may not enjoy watching your video as much. Though appearance may be a disadvantage for some, you should never allow how you look stop you from creating an online video, period.

• Say goodbye to your privacy - Video blogging is somewhat intrusive and people can connect with you on a personal level. With that said, more people know more information about who you are, what you look like, what your voice sounds like, etc. I’m not suggesting that anyone will be out to make an attempt to steal your identity - nobody will get your credit card number, social security number, names of family members, etc. unless you give them out. I’m saying that you will have less privacy in your life. The internet gives an immense number of people access to know who you are and what you’re all about. For those that enjoy having a large privacy barrier between you and the web, video blogging will do a great job at breaking down that wall.

Can you expect a video from Andrew Pavelski?

When I get a new computer or laptop (with the webcam built in), you can expect plenty of videos to be thrown in the mix with my content. I really think that you will enjoy watching my videos and I think that I will really enjoy creating them. I currently don’t have access to a webcam, though I may look into buying one soon. Until I do manage to get a webcam for video blogging, I’ll keep working to improve my writing skills and keep having confidence in my ability to write timeless content.  When I do decide to incorporate some video posts into my routine, I am not going to abandon ship on producing written content. I think having a balance between some nice written content and some nice video blogging posts will look classy and would improve my blog’s online image.

Do you think you’ll step up and make a video sometime?

Have you ever tried video blogging? Do you think that you’ll ever try video blogging? Feel free to share your responses in the comments section and let me know your thoughts about video blogging.