The newest place you can show your support for BAYB and maybe some of your fellow author’s blogs is spicypage.com. It looks like it may prove to be a good place to promote your site and comment on other sites that you like.

So why not pop over there and vote for your favourite sites (hopefully BAYB) will be in there!

While I have you here too I just want to remind Authors that if you want to use a picture that you uploaded here in the past all you need to do is click on the browse all tab where you would upload new images.

Remember we have the forums if you need a hand with anything!

Also congrats to Ed who is our first entry in the banner competition that we’ve got running!

Because the owner of the blog saw it and commented Ed goes into the draw twice!

It is hard to talk about blogs in terms of something I can’t live without, but certainly,  Boags World makes life as a blogger and webmaster a lot more bearable.

Many moons ago, Paul Boag started a web design company called Headscape. It seems to have done rather well out of universities and public bodies. Unlike many people with his corporate web design experience, Paul has developed a blog aimed at “ordinary people” who build or maintain websites.

He is a usability and accessibility freak, and shouts (metaphorically) very loudly in the ears of web designers who stick to table based design and won’t use the rich web 2.0, domscript and other geeky features coming into vogue. That may sound a bit “out there” for ordinary people, but he applies himself well to explaining in words of one syllable exactly what makes for an accessible, usable and upgradable website.

Say you want to build, commission or even just tweak a website, Paul Boag won’t go into gory code details, but talks in bigger brushstrokes about the principles of layout, where search boxes should be, the rules for accessibility and usability, and so on. So, if you pay attention, you will learn the overall picture of web design, and then you can move forward with at least half a clue about what you should be trying to achieve.

Not only is he knowledgeable and a straight forward talker on paper (his podcasts get a bit wordy at times!) but he is also quite avant garde, verging on controversial. If you want to know how to market a site, Boags World will explain about proven practices, ie his proven practices, usually listed 1 to 10 in no particular order. By way of an example of his forward-thinking, he is a great believer in the future of social websites, and he does not advocate SEO as the main thrust of a campaign to bring your blog to the forefront of public consciousness. Ooooh!! He seems to have the traffic to back up his tactics.

Ultimately he has developed the blog into a podcast and forum, and I suppose the bottom line motivation is to raise the profile of his company. That is just one role of a blog, and fortunately, Paul flies the flag for good corporate practice and offers more than he takes. Almost no subject is taboo and he will relate what seems to be everything he knows about a topic, and if he doesn’t know, he will usually find out. Excellent blogging practice with a sense of humor which makes me return to the blog time and again to see what is going on in Boags World.

I was reading that in Asia there is a miniature musk deer and once a year the glands of the animal secrete the musk fragrance. 

 The deer get very excited at the intoxicating perfume.  So much so that they all begin to search for it and start running and looking in all directions.  They run about more and more, in their search, crashing into bushes and obstacles until finally they rush across a precipice, in search of the fragrance, and fall to their own end – ahhhh!

If the deer realised that what they were searching for was within, they would live and flourish instead of hurtling to their own destruction.

A bit like us humans, I guess.

Good blogging,
Mike
Mike’s Money Making Mission

P.S. The post on my own blog today is about how mailshots, or sales letters, are similar to money making blogs

Whilst we all get settled into our new surroundings we thought it might be nice to run a quick competition.

The Prizes

First prize will be 2000 impressions on the BAYB homepage for any site that you wish.

Second prize will be 1000 and third prize will be 500 impressions.

How Can I win?

It’s simple. All we want you to do to go into the draw is to write a post of no less than 100 words about your favourite non-BAYB blog. Let us know which blog that’s out there that you can’t live without!

You will get a double chance to win if the blog in question mentions the post and links to it or posts a comment here on BAYB.

The competition will run from right now till midnight 24th Jan.

If you’re not already set up as an author and would like to enter please email us your post!

pjspaperdoll…will be participating in a fun new event in BLOG VILLAGE! The theme for this Carnival is “About the Family” and gives you a chance to brag on the special people in your life. Carnival entries are limited to BLOG VILLAGERS and blogs that are directly linked to BLOG VILLAGER blogs.

The BLOG VILLAGE Goes Gonzo Carnival is hosted by BLOG VILLAGE owner, Dirty Butter. Entry rules and contact information are posted at The Gonzo Papers and in the BLOG VILLAGE NEWS.

Let’s have a little fun while getting to know more about our fellow VILLAGERS and reach out to the linked community for possible newcomers to BLOG VILLAGE. Now let’s me see…what can I write about…?

Recently, I completed my 500th post on my blog, The Gospel According To Rhys. Like this excellent site, I also made the switch to WordPress (anybody who wants their blog to be appreciated a lot more, I’d do it. I have earned more money, got more comments and my traffic has picked up no end) recently. So, as a 4 and a half year veteran, I’d thought about giving some tips to keep your blogging fresh.

Well, by tips I mean tip. There is really only one: evolve.

Evolving can mean a lot of things. Change your design, change your system (it’s easy to import blogger posts from WordPress, and with a bit of .htaccess scripting, all the permalinks will be the same), introduce a new topic to talk about (I went from a strictly personal blog – football – other sports – gaming – internet and web design – money making and SEO).

Your readers evolve too. Looking through my blogroll, most of my current regular readers have been around for the past 2 years. Fantastic blogs have stopped blogging (typical veteran, but some of the blogs from yesteryear I believe are a lot better than a lot of blogs nowadays, but that’s just me!). Some of them come back, some just loiter in the comments, some disappear altogether. If you like a blog, tell them, either via e-mail or comments. Not just a “your blog is fantastic” (particularly on WordPress, some people with higher blogs do delete these comments, as they believe they’re just after a linkback), but try and encourage a discussion. Comment on the post. Trust me, I’ve had people say “Your blog inspired me to do this…”, or “I kept my eye out for Colwyn Bay FC on the football results, and I was happy they win.”. As a blogger, it makes me happy, as it shows I’ve inspired somebody’s life. Not for the better, per se. But certainly not for the worse.

Blogging has been my most rewarding hobby ever. It’s been one that has got me in newspapers, on the radio, on huge websites such as about.com. It has also been a nice little earner, and my current relationship is one of my readers :). So, when it feels like you want to give up, read your comments, email your readers, or do something drastic like change your design. There was a reason you started blogging, more reasons evolve for why you should continue.

Call me cynical, but I am an old fashioned type who has seen time and again that the best results in business and life come from real relationships that develop over time. And the best relationships require a little bit of effort too.

So if some initial work and some ongoing chit chat and interaction is good enough for success and fulfillment in real life, then I suspect it is good enough for developing a blog on the internet.

Link exchanges build relationships.

All well and good, but I personally don’t feel comfortable with the sort of link exchanges where all you invest is the time to paste links in your sidebar to sites you rarely visit. It sounds good for the short term, but doesn’t seem a good long term plan. So, rather than be link junkies, we are investing time in developing a blogroll with a bit of meat to it.

Pisstakers idea of a blogroll

Since we began, we have reviewed about a dozen sites that have been a part of the Pisstakers’ MyBlogLog community. After our sort out in the New Year, we created a proper Bloggers section and placed all those blog reviews in one place. We then created a blogroll in the sidebar, simply using the blogging software to categorise the posts by name.

So, now, if you have been featured, you have your name in the sidebar (your category). Furthermore, there will be at least one other link back to your site within some content specific to your site. Furthermore, if you have any news or announcements in the future, tell us about it and we will add a post into your category. More links, real content, relevant content. This to us sounds somewhat like a meaningful relationship builder.

Our latest review is of Blog About Your Blog. Hope it helps. And if you want to be featured in the Bloggers review section of our site in the future, let us know and we will get to work. Or, to help out, send us a synopsis and we will use that as the basis of a review.

Thanks Ed