BloggersWalk

Unique Blog Designs is especially well-known for designing blogs like Shoemoney, John Chow, Entrecard, and more recently, Yahoo!. Well, they just celebreated their first year and are holding a contest! They’re giving out some awesome prizes and considering that it’s free, it never hurts to participate!

Prizes
Grand Prize: 8GB iPod Touch + the upcoming UBD Citrus WordPress theme
Three runner-up prizes of the upcoming UBD Citrus WordPress theme

Entering is really simple. Just make a comment to the UBD’s contest post and send a trackback to it via a blog post and you’re in.

If that iPod Touch comes to BloggersWalk, you know that it’ll be going back to one of you guys.

I bet that all of you bloggers want to boost your RSS feed count and want more people to read your posts. I’ve been blogging for quite a while and I’ve felt the same desire. So I thought and thought again to see if there is anything I can do to increase my “fan base” if you could call it that way.

If I was a surfer/visitor…
The two things that you should keep in mind when viewing your blog in a visitor’s perspective is quality and keywords. Are the stuff that you’re writing informative? Is it really worth a read? You visit your blog everyday because it’s yours and you have to manage it, but visitors visit to gain something. They’re not going to come for no reason. Also, think about how your visitors are going to get to your blog. Keywords. It’s big! If you’re using WordPress as your blogging platform, utilize all those SEO plugins and make some nice titles using the keywords your audience will probably search for!

Be an Opinionated Blogger
There are always new debates and arguments going on in the blogosphere. Whether it is in the form of a thoughtful comment or a full blown blogpost, usually stating your opinion will get you some publicity. Play the villain or the hero that solves the debate; it is sure to give you some exposure.

Link for Further Reference
Usually those who are selfish won’t get the “fan base” that they crave for. You know how Wikipedia links to its own articles whenever possible? By them doing this, they can keep the visitor within their site. However, from a visitor’s perspective, you know that when you go to a Wikipedia information page, you will gain more than enough information. By linking out to other bloggers, first you form a relationship with them, but you also build this reputation among your readers. Your readers will know that your blog is one that is quality and is one that will offer more than enough information. You want more, not less.

Readers > Advertisements
BloggersWalk has very little advertisement. I’m personally not a fan of so many advertisements, but at one time, I had Google AdSense up. Personally, I thought it was slightly ugly, but a few of my designing friends told me that it was really distracting and made the page look very ugly. Some even said that they’d rather NOT visit the blog! That was like a wake-up call to me. I’d rather make a thousand less and have a hundred more subscribers.

Spice Up Your Posts!
Do you remember the time when your English teacher told you to use the bold, italics, and the underlines sparingly? This is because they really are powerful. As a blogger, you should be utilizing them anyways. However, that’s not what I wanted to say for this post. Your English class probably was a Times New Roman, 12 pt, with a black font. When you’re blogging, the restrictions are quite the same. Who said your words can be in a different color? Put some makeup on those posts to make your post look a little bit dazzling!

I’m sure there are a lot more tips to increasing your loyal reader count/RSS subscriber count. Care to share your tips? These are just a few that I thought of, but I’m sure that you probably have some under your sleeve too. If you don’t mind, make a comment and share it with the BloggersWalk community!

Besides the monetary investments needed to start a blog, probably the biggest investment you need to make is time. In all the time that I spend to get BloggersWalk clicking, creating informative posts is probably what takes up the most time. After all, content is king right? So, my goal recently has been trying to cut the amount of time I invest on writing content while not losing quality.

Ask Questions
There are many types of blog posts ranging from daily ramblings to product reviews. Regardless of the type, a technique that can be used to efficiently write up posts is asking questions. These questions can range from simple questions asking yourself on what you did today, to a common question in a niche you are dealing with, such as what is the best blogging platform when starting out. This is the spark that gets your post going. Most blog posts have a definite point that it is trying to get across; usually these questions help in focusing the blog post into delivering a specific point.

“Blueprint” a Post
You know how architects create a blueprint before working on a building? The theory is a bit similar. Before you start writing your first draft, plan something out. If you’ve got some scrap paper, it’ll do. All you have to do is make a simple outline on how your finished post will look like. You can do this in two ways. For every post, you can make a new blueprint from scratch where you plan everything out. Another way, which is the one that I often do, is creating a general template where all you have to do is fill out what point will go where. Basically, you would need pre-made template. I keep a simple template that I just fill out quickly: an introductory paragraph, a few paragraphs with my points, and a concluding paragraph.

Research for Quality
Remember how a blog is a compilation of useful information? Unless you know about everything in the world, research is necessary. This can include some important quotes or statistics relevant to your post. At first, researching will be quite time consuming. However, once you gain a lot of experience, you’ll know where to go to find the information you need. Although this step is not always necessary, once done, it can certainly boost the quality of your post.

Seek Feedback
Always seek feedback. Feedback can come in the form of comments and emails from the readers, and maybe even some of your friends. You can’t be perfect alone. If you do want to increase the overall quality of your blog and the posts, constructive criticism is necessary.

Analyze the Results
In my opinion, this step is crucial in growing your blog. After you make a post, with your favorite statistics analyzer (in my case AWStats, Google Analytics, and a few others work), monitor and see which posts are popular and which aren’t. There’s a reason why one post receives many times more visitors than another. See how your popular post is different or better than your not as popular post.

To be honest, I don’t go through this list every time I make a blog post. However, it is a little guideline that I do follow quite often. If you can’t be bothered to go through all the five steps, you can also implement portions of it. In my case, some posts, I will post without any second thoughts, but seek feedback later on from some of my fellow bloggers.

Do you have any tips that you could share with the BloggersWalk community on writing quality posts? If you don’t mind, please do share your tips!

I’m constantly starting new blogs with my random domains and from time to time on Blogger too. With blogs, the initial launch is a great opportunity to form some relationships and make some buzz. To do that, you need posts. However, I have always believed (and still do) that the first post should be a brief introduction post. Nonetheless, some people seem to think otherwise, so I’ve tried to compile some pros and cons with what seems to be the rule of thumb in the blogosphere these days: launch your blog when you have 10 posts.

Pros of Launching with 10+ Posts

• A good first impression. The last thing that you want is a newcomer to your blog thinking that your blog is not worthy of reading and subscribing.
• Your blog seems consistent. Especially if you space out the 10 posts on a certain time interval such as daily or every other day.
• You can start promoting your individual posts right away! While this is do-able with a blog that launches with only the “Hello world!” post, it is a lot easier with a blog that already has quite a bit of content.
• You aren’t pressured to keep up with a blog schedule. If you have a blog setup, you better get posting regularly if you want some visitors. However, if you haven’t even launched it, you can take some time to write up your posts.

Cons of Launching with 10+ Posts

• The 10+ posts before starting does not guarantee anything. It is more of a gamble.
• It is likely that these posts, regardless of their quality, will be pushed back quickly anyways as you update your blog.
• It can be tiring and you COULD suffer from a burnout before even starting your blog, as you would, at the back of your mind, know that you are writing up posts that are not going to be displayed today or tomorrow or any day until the launch.
• When do you know that it is enough posts? Is 10 enough? Or is 15 enough? How about 25? Obviously the guy that prepares 50 will have a better chance at achieving a successful blog launch, right?

Conclusion
In my opinion, it really comes down to your preferences. Personally, I like to give a new blog a start with no posts. I like to see it develop into a successful blog right from 0. However, that is merely my opinion and others could pursue a different tactic when launching a blog. I have met more bloggers who like to launch their blogs with 10+ posts. That’s not me, but that could be you.

So I’m asking all you bloggers out there. When you started your blog how did you start out? Did you start from 0 posts or did you write a few posts before the launch? Whichever one you go with, care to share with the rest of the community why you choose to do it that way?

Ever since I began reading I have always loved material that was concise and to the point. Studies even show that people can easily consume written material if they are broken up into paragraphs containing 3-4 sentences. However, the best of them all has to be the list.

Lists are both clear and concise. Unfortunately, not many bloggers use this. This could be because the majority of the blogs on the web right now are personal blogs. However, even these personal blogs could use lists. In fact, lists help in preventing you reader from deviating.

In my case, my trackers (and I use way too many and stare at them way too long) show that my blog posts using lists are way more popular than those that don’t. Sure I don’t have many on BloggersWalk yet, but my other blogs also show a similar trend. Thus, it seems pretty safe to assume that lists work better. Let’s see why.

1. Short, BUT Informative
Rarely do you see long lists. If they were that long they would be paragraphs. The whole point of lists is that it gives the important information while taking out all the fluff. Readers like that as it saves time and energy.

2. It’s Not So Boring
Although some long lines of constant words are quite interesting to read, this is on a rare scenario. Most of the time, the really long posts are simply boring. The reader gets quickly bored of all the unnecessary information thrown at them. Lists don’t do this. You NEVER want your readers thinking that your blog is boring!

3. Organizes the Material
You know how lists usually go from 1 to X? Most of the time this number has some meaning behind it. Personally, I’m not dazzling at this one. I usually just number whatever comes to mind. However, lists usually are supposed to help you organize your material in any specific order you may have.

4. Helps With Persuading
As a blogger, you are often giving some sort of an information. In the case of this information being a trick or an opinion, lists are really good at persuading your visitors in seeing your opinion. This is because your points are thrown at your visitors one after another. Hopefully right now, I’m persuading you that lists are a good thing to implement in your posts.

5. Easy to Compose
Lists are often easy to create and write. You don’t need to have an awesome talent in your language. All you need to be able to do is be able to deliver your points in the most simplest manner possible. After all, that’s what lists are–giving your say in a quick but informative manner. This is what makes lists easy to create and implement in your blog posts.

Lists keep your posts clear and concise. If you are by any chance a high school student preparing for the SATs, you probably know this. In your writing section, you select your answers based on the following order: correct > clear > concise. As a blogger, assuming that your posts are correct and logical, what makes the difference between you and the average Joe is clarity and conciseness. Lists help you tremendously in achieving this.

Are you a big fan of lists? You think lists are stupid? Have your say about this post and leave a comment please!

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts that were of excellent quality, but looked unprofessional due to some mistakes here and there. Before hitting the “Publish” button, you can prevent these little mistakes and make your overall blog a lot better. This simple checklist might seem like an extra chore, but if you are serious about blogging, caring about your blog’s professionalism is important. Don’t you agree?

Spelling and Punctuations
What puts me off the most are spelling errors. To bring your blog posts to the next level, professionalism is important and a part of it is spelling things correctly. WodrPress and Gooogle should be fixed. Even a simple re-read over your blog post can help a lot. In the case of WordPress, it comes with a built-in spell checker. Clicking the spell check button and looking for the underlined words take at most a minute. Punctuations are also a key thing to watch out for. The most frequent punctuation error is forgetting to put a period. Again, a re-read can help immensely.

Organization
To be honest, I’m still struggling with this one, but am trying to improve. Organization. I’m still a blogger that is just writing the points as they come into my mind. Currently I have a post that is queued which discusses organization in further detail. However, as that post is not up yet, I’ll make a brief point here. Before posting, you should already have a general idea on what your finished post will look like. Instead of having that blueprint in your mind, draw one out on a paper. See what the best order of the paragraphs is.

Making Line Breaks
Studies show that people can read easily when they see a block of text that is about three to four sentences long. Again, this is not me and I have a tendency to write really long paragraphs. However, when I read a few blogs, I do notice some really long paragraphs which could’ve been two or three paragraphs. See how you can make smart line breaks to help your visitors. Remember, an important aspect of blogging is serving your readers well.

Link Out When Possible
Specifically, a web log (to different itself from other versions like photo logs) is a source of information. If you visit Wikipedia, you will notice that the majority of the articles there link out to other references. Readers love this as they want to know the most information possible. Linking out shows both the blogger’s professionalism and an awareness of the topic discussed. By linking out to related sites or posts, your post becomes more close to being THE post on the Internet for whatever you happen to be blogging about in that post. The best example of this is Wikipedia’s articles. In most of their articles they will link whenever possible.

Read It Out Loud
My experience tells me that this is the most effective last check-up to do before hitting the “Publish” button. It helps me find grammatical errors and other minor flaws in the post. I’m not a grammar whiz, so I will have a few grammatical errors that I couldn’t find. Nonetheless, at least eliminating those that I do know of always helps.

These are a few of the areas that I’m working on. I won’t say that I do it for all of my posts, but I do go through this short checklist with most of my posts. It helps immensely as I am able to catch the errors that do slip through on my first write. As a student, you are always told to write a first draft, revise it, then maybe think of the final draft. Why publish the first draft with blogs? If you cared for your blog, you shouldn’t be satisfied with a first draft, but strive for the excellent final draft.

Did I miss anything? Do you have your own little checklist that you go through before hitting the “Publish” button? Why don’t you share it with the rest of the community by putting it as a comment?

Blogging is definitely a growing hobby these days. However, some people might wonder what the point of blogging is. After all, it is quite time consuming to be an active blogger, as it blogging is not all about publishing new posts on your blog. As (already) the first half of my summer vacation is over, I’m starting to worry about the amount of time I will be able to invest in my other blogs, as I’m sure that most of my time will be spent for BloggersWalk.

I am really beginning to think about whether keeping my other blogs alive will be worthwhile (again, don’t worry, BloggersWalk will be constantly updated no matter what), which led me to writing this post… I figured that some of you may be wondering the same thing, as many people these days live very busy lives. So, what do you get out of blogging? In no particular order…

Voicing Your Thoughts
Isn’t this one of the more popular reasons behind blogging? Blogging gives your an opportunity to say what you wish. Now, the size of your audience may be unknown, but at least it is a place where you can deliver your voice. Had a fight with someone? Don’t like a certain political move? Did you get a 4.0 GPA in the hardest class but don’t want to brag about it in front of others? Well, a blog is your space!

Metacognition: Thinking About Thinking
One of the most important things about blogging is proofreading. This is to avoid flaws such as spelling mistakes, punctuations errors, and of course, illogical thinking. By looking over your work once more, you are thinking about what you wrote. This helps in increasing your level of thinking. Note that this also happens when you are commenting, as you want to look over what your wrote in the comment box.

Your Writing Gets Better
I’ve said this so many times, but I’ll say it again. The core of blogging is writing. I mean, that’s what blogging is! You can’t blog without writing. So, the more your blog, the more you are writing. Consequently, your writing can only get better. Practice makes perfect. Personally, I believe that such things like writing can’t be perfected. However, constant blogging (writing) can help you reach perfection.

A Window to Knowledge
Unless you’re a splogger (SPAM blogger), you’re learning something while you blog. Wait… Maybe you can learn to SPAM… Anyways, whether it is a niche specific blog or a general blog, you are bound to learn something while you blog. With BloggersWalk I’m learning about the blogosphere and making money blogging. With my other niche blogs I am learning new things. You really can’t avoid consuming new knowledge if you are a blogger.

You Develop an Online Identity
The Internet is a big part of our world today and having a presence on it is a fantastic thing. It is different from those Facebook profiles and an MSN/AIM/YIM account. As a blogger, you are establishing yourself as a potential Internet celebrity. Your thoughts and ideas are widely accessible around the globe. You are not only known in your local community, but you may also be known by someone on the other side of the world.

Your Network Grows
An integral part of blogging is commenting on others’ blogs. What is interesting about blogs is that more blogs are run by one person rather than a group (although group blogs are popular). However, the success of a blog is not dependent on the author, but dependent on other bloggers. It’s like social networking while working by yourself. Through commenting on others’ blogs, you meet new people and expand your network. Man is considered a social animal by nature for a reason!

You COULD Make Money
A blog has the potential to earn quite a bit of money. Search engines like blogs because of the new and unique content. With a good ranking for even a decent keyword, there is a potential for some massive search engine traffic. Not to forget, a blog can also receive traffic through link exchanges and various advertisements. This traffic can then be monetized to earn quite a bit of money. Some people even make a living through blogs. Note that nearly everyone, with some effort, can get some extra pocket money through their blogs too.

You Learn to Look Back
A “web log” (the extended term of “blog”) is a log. Weeks later, months later, and even years later the content you wrote will still be there assuming that your data is not deleted. If you currently run a blog, see the very first post you made ever or the very first post you made for your blog. After you’ve done that check out your current posts. See a slight change? As time goes on, everyone grows in their own ways. A blog grows with the author(s). You can reflect on the mistakes you made or relive the moments that were wonderful. A blog post is like taking a snapshot without any expensive equipments!

These are eight benefits to blogging. There are more and the list can go on and on. I only took a few from quite a long list that I made while on a bus ride. The benefits are really huge if you think about it! Anyways, I don’t want the spotlight to only be one me!

What benefits do you see in blogging?

Had a hard time looking for a nice free theme for your WordPress? Well, the theme directory is open!

One of the most important aspects of a blog is its design. Okay, WordPress has a pretty decent default theme, but it surely isn’t something that you want to stick with in the long run. The officialy directory has been cleaned and is starting from 0 again (currently 9 are in the directory). Soon enough, the directory should become massive.

Need a good free theme? Looking to change your current theme? Can’t pay for a custom yet? It doesn’t hurt to check it out. I’m seeing some good ones in there already.

WordPress recently released WordPress 2.6. Many people already updated the system and this morning, I updated BloggersWalk to 2.6 too. However, one of the blogs that I write for, but do not own, still runs the old WordPress 2.1. A few people have also asked me if the update to the latest release is actually worth it. To update or not to update, that is the question…

New Features!
Usually these major updates have new features in them. In the case of WordPress 2.6, I’m really enjoying the plugin manager. Those who are new to WordPress will not know this, but those who did use any of the versions before this release knows the pain of having to activate the plugins one by one. Now, it can be done in bulk. Also, although very minor, I really like the little word count feature added with this release. These updates often bring a collection of great updates. While some may be of no use to you, note that some can be of use to you.

Security Concerns
Okay, most of the time, if there is a security issue, a minor patch is done. An example would be an update from 2.5 to 2.5.1. However, most of the time, major udpates also have significantly improved security systems. A blog is a big thing with a lot of information on it. Losing all the data would be horrible. You should backup frequently anyways to prevent any disasters. However, if you have a good secure system in place you won’t even need to get to the point of needing to restore because of a hacker or a corruption. Usually major releases have these security updates. Personally I upgrade for this reason than for the new (but often not useful) features.

Plugins & Theme Compatibility
Plugins take your site to a whole new level. It quickly adds new and interesting features to make your blogs look and/or function better. However, often with updates, plugins can be a problem. With WordPress 2.6, this is not a big issue as nothing much changed on the plugin side. Nonetheless, this isn’t guaranteed with 2.7, 2.8, and so on. Again, with themes, nothing much changed with WordPress 2.6. However, with the later versions, compatibility issues can come up, such as not being able to fully use the new features. So, you have to decide, are the updates worth more than a few plugins and/or themes you may not be able to use? Or vice-versa?

A Bigger Hassle?
Upgrading your blog to the latest release might be a bigger hassle. It might sound easy, but if everything does not work out as planned, the two options are to stick with the bunch of errors or downgrade. Downgrading at times might not be possible, and even if it was possible, it would be a major hassle to do it most of the time. Is it worth the risk?

Conclusion
Am I confusing you by any chance on whether to upgrade/update or not? The decision is really up to you. Jason seemed to be against upgrading so early and I too am (except for this release). So you’re probably wondering what you have to do then. With every upgrade, the first thing I do is backing up. I back up everything just incase of a disastrous failure. In the case of such an unfortunate event, all you need to do is download a release archive and install it with your old database.

Did you upgrade to the recently released WordPress 2.6? If so, are you liking it? Did you face any difficulties? If you didn’t, why didn’t you upgrade yet?

Luckily, I was able to get to updating this blog to WordPress 2.6 a lot earlier than I thought. So far I haven’t seen much changes here on the admin panel’s side. However, as promised, I’ll check out the new and improved features with WordPress 2.6 and some of my thoughts on this update.