April has surprisingly been a down month for us. Our RSS readers continue to increase (thank you!) but our traffic has been the lowest it’s been in a while. Still pushing about 10,000 visitors I’m always looking for more readers.

Here is the best for the month, some of these articles might of been overlooked.

Bloggers Guide to SEO: This article definitely was in the making for a while. I think it is very helpful for newer bloggers, or those who aren’t practicing SEO. Even some novice bloggers found the guide useful. Yes, I am working on a follow-up!

Could Mixx Be the Next Digg?: This article caught fire on social media thanks to some great submissions. Mixx is one of my new favorite social media sites. It’s not sending a lot of traffic, but it’s still fun to use. Make sure to join the new Blog about your Blog Mixx Group.

5 Indepth Blogging Tips: Blogging tips are usually a nice quick read. We put together 5 quick tips with the help from one of our readers.

How to Retire at 21: This was an interesting blog review of Retire @ 21. This website and blog I definitely enjoy so make sure to read the review.

Making Enemies on Social Media: This post was a little difficult. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to write it. We’ve obviously been penalized by Stumbleupon due to some “enemies” which is very unfortunate. Who would of thought we got negative criticism on that post as well? Do we really complain that much?

Hope you all enjoy our best and favorite posts for the month. We appreciate all of your comments so keep them coming!

Video Blogging (Vlogging) could be the future of blogging, some have predicted so. People want their information fast, easy and a lot of it. Several bloggers that I follow have either turned strictly to vlogging or make sure to do one weekly or monthly (even more).

Benefits of Vlogging

Vlogging allows you to connect with your readers on another level. Some bloggers like to add pictures to their blog to give a face to the name and blogger. Better yet, is vlogging. This allows you to interact with your readers to not only put a face to the blogger, but also show them even more personality.

Typing an article can be time consuming, sometimes you may not get to write everything you want to. With a vlog the topic is basically endless. You can say whatever you want for as long as you want. There is no word limit.

On a vlog you can incorporate different topics and questions all into one vlogging session. Instead of writing 3 small articles, you could combine them into one vlogging video. This is excellent for answering readers questions. You could basically do this with writing, but vlogs seem to flow better with different topics. The transition is much easier.

Overall it seems vloggers can really express themselves better. You can really be yourself instead of trying to write in a certain format.

Vlogging Is Nice… But…

I still don’t like it that much. I’d prefer sticking to regular blogs. Heres why:

Some vlogs seem like a waste of time. Get to the point, I really don’t have 10 minutes to spend just listening to ramblings. Some vloggers basically put together half hour shows regularly.

There is no text to get search engine referrals. Unless you already have the traffic or the video does well on social media, it may be a lost cause.

Watching videos online can be a hassle. Sometimes there is a missing file or plugin I need in order to watch the video. With slow loading times this can be another issue.

Is Video Blogging the Future?

It could be, but I could never imagine doing an entire blog with just video postings. I don’t think that blogs could generally, really excel with just a video blogging format.

Do you video blog?

Court let the blogosphere know this morning that Google seems to be updating PR. So far we are still sticking at PR3. However, some of my other domains seem to be upgrading to a higher PR.

The highest reported seems to be Daily Blog Tips with a strong PR 7.

My twitter seems to be going crazy with the talks of the PR update.

Have you seen changes on your PR?

I’m always looking for a deal online. Yesterday I had to renew a domain with Godaddy, the first thing I did was search for Godaddy coupon codes. Here are some great deals around the internet for your blogging needs.

The Domain

I use Godaddy for all my domain name purchases. I currently have about 5-6 domains registered through there. Each domain I’ve used coupons for. Here are a few I’ve found on the internet that should work for you.

• $6.95 per .COM coupon code: cjc695dom (I personally used this yesterday)
• 10% off your order coupon code cjcsave10
• Take an additional 1$ off ANY purchase! coupon code cjcdeal104
• 20% off your order of $40 or more coupon code boi2 pete2

I’m not sure when any of these expire, but it’s worth a shot trying any of these codes!

The Hosting

I’ve only used Hostmonster for my hosting needs and I have very few complaints. Hostmonster runs for $5.95 per month. They offer

• Unlimited domains
• 5000 email accounts
• PHP + MYSQL + more
• Free domain name

Yeah thats right a free domain name. So basically, I never had to pay for blogaboutyourblog.com

The Plugin

Daily Planet Tech let us know about a coupon code for the OIOPublisher wordpress plugin. Use the coupon code QWERTY-17 and get the plugin for $20, a $17 discount. I personally used this coupon so it does work. However it expires May 5th, so you don’t have much time to use it.

The OIOPublisher plugin is a great thing to have when trying to sell ads directly and monetize your blog. Jim did a great review of OIOPublisher that you can read to give you all the information you need.

There have been a few interesting articles and debates surrounding the blogosphere.

45n5 put together the value of the top money making blogs. That list values BAYB at about $11,000. Don’t worry we don’t plan on selling anytime soon.

Ryan Shamus did his own thing doing a round-up of of the top 100 make money online blogs. Each blog has a little excerpt about them. You can find us at #34 there. There are plenty of interesting blogs to start reading.

Now For The Drama…

With the sale of OneMansGoal, bloggers are coming out of the woodwork in one way or another. I really don’t have a strong opinion whichever way. I have never read the blog, so why should I care how much it sells for?

Garry Conn has come out with a post about the scam in the make money online niche. However if these people aren’t going to research and get some real evidence it’s there own fault in my opinion. Garry Conn mentions several examples as well as Vic and John Cow.

In response, John Cow has come out with the Make Money Online Bubble Not Bursting. In this post he calls out Garry Conn about the drama.

Blogger Unleashed has of course chimmed in on this vlogging, not sure which one though. He rambles a lot, but they are interesting nonetheless.

Don’t get too far into the drama, you may never get back out! However it is entertaining, I’m glad it’s not us.

A powerful way to advertise your blog is on t-shirts and other off line advertising. I’ve looked into buying and making t-shirts for this blog, with very little luck. After calling several places the cost per shirt ended up being way too much. I have a BAYB t-shirt made on Printfection, however that costs $16 per shirt.

Vista Prints Free T-Shirt Offer

Unless you are buying in bulk, it’s hard to find a good price on custom t-shirts. Vista Print is offering a free customized t-shirt. You don’t have to purchase anything, all you have to do is design your shirt and pay for shipping.

Customize Your FREE T-Shirt

Even one shirt can help you market your blog and get off line visitors, online. I like to wear my custom shirts whenever I go to places with a lot of people, like the mall etc.

More Free Promotional Items

Not only does VistaPrint offer free t-shirts they just sent me an email with many other free and discounted offers. Whatever you can customize they seem to have it.
They have free promotional items like:

• 250 Free Business Cards
• 10 Large Magnets
• 1 Pen
• 1 Notepad
• 100 Postcards

If you decide to purchase any of these products they are at low prices, better than Cafepress and other sites I’ve seen.

If you don’t want to wear or use your promotional products, they could be a great prize for a contest for your blog. Who wouldn’t want a Blog about your Blog pen?

My marketing budget generally isn’t that big, yet. The money I make goes into living, bills, etc. However I have purchased reviews, banners and links in the past.

Where Should You Invest Your Money?

This is a classic chicken and the egg theory that many bloggers have debated about. Some argue that with the right content, readers will come. Some argue that without marketing you can’t get readers. Some argue both are equally important.

Many bloggers have started selling articles for easy revenue. The more people selling, the cheaper you can buy articles for. You don’t even need to be a writer, to be a blogger, you can get someone to do that for you.

With that dilemma, which should you purchase?

Articles

In the Bloggeries Forum, Bobby is selling his articles for $3-$5 dollars. By choosing the right topic and SEO, you can not only hope and expect your post will get social media traffic, it will also get traffic from search engines.

I get paid to write articles for different blogs and it’s a nice gig. The best thing you can do is get it to be steady. For a particular blog I make over $100 a month, so I can see why this is appealing to bloggers.

Advertising

Buying advertising and links can be cheap fill, unless you renew. The traffic you get sometimes only lasts so long. However, you can also convert that traffic into readers if you advertise on the right blog. We just (finally) added an advertising page with many great options.

Given that argument, I am interested to test out purchasing articles. This not only will save me time for other things, its another fresh perspective.

What would you rather buy, an article or advertising?

We know how I started blogging, I’ve told the story a few times. I got several wonderful comments of bloggers telling their story of how they started blogging I wanted to share them to everyone.

Blogging Stories

Rhys

I started blogging nearly 6 years ago. The main reason was to surpress an ego trip I was having. I was reading in a magazine all about blogging and how a lot of them were rubbish. I was like “I’ll show you, I’ll start a blog”. Six years later I’m still going.

I had a period of about 3 months off blogging, and I changed blogs because I wanted a fresh start, but I’m still here.

Laura

I started blogging in 1999. I was inspired by a lot of blogs which were mostly done by people who knew how to code in notepad backwards, just kidding about the backwards part.

They were beautiful and amazing feats of HTML. Blogger was pretty much unknown then. The only software was what people came up with themselves. I think there was DiaryLand and LiveJournal, not 100% sure if they were a bit later or not. Anyway, I started blogging cause I wanted to create art online. Art being the blog itself as well as the contents.

Sampath

Before I started blogging, I knew that there is a possibility to earn money through it. But I believe that if you only blog for money, your blog won’t be a successful one. You must provide valuable information for others while earning an income, like this blog does. I started my blog on January of this year and gathering attention of the people now.I’m enjoying it and working hard to maintain it’s quality while generating an income. I’m still having a poor monthly income. Hope that it will increase in the future.

Esofthub

I started blogging in Sept ‘06 because I wanted to learn more “blogging” and this new thing called “Web 2.0.” I posted my “web finds” and “My SysAd” blogs on Rhys’ toplist and then things sort of went from there.

Ami

It’s been one year… a little bit more. I was frustrated with the crime in our country (South Africa) and just after our own personal run in with criminal elements, I started blogging, about misc stuff, but mostly about news (especially crime news).
Didn’t make me an optimist, but it was a place to express your thoughts about the future.

Sorry if I left you out. If I continue to keep getting these great blogging stories of how you got started I’d love to continue posting them.

How did you start blogging?