A lot of bloggers are starting to host competitions (us included) to try to spice things up on their blog. You can’t go wrong with giving things away *free*, especially money.

Nomar at King Nomar Dot Com is hosting a blog review competition, and the best review will get 25$. Just for your trouble, Nomar will also give you a backlink from his blog. Win or lose, everyone is a winner with a free link.

I am obsessed with stats, trying to set up Blog about your Blog to earn money, send traffic to our bloggers and essentially, be a better blog. Nomar is doing just that with his blog. Pretty impressive stats with a pretty simple blog. At the beginning of his competition he stated that his blog was 12,369 on technorati, 96,027 on Alexa and has a pagerank of 4.

He’s already seen success (assuming from his competition) by climbing almost 1,000 spots on technorati and 5,000 on alexa. Meaning more blogs are linking to him and he’s seeing more traffic from that.

Not only is his blog doing well, but his web directory is also growing. His featured links are cheap now as his directory grows, might want to consider getting a spot there cheap.

As I previously mentioned, King Nomar dot Com is simple, meaning his layout is clean and organized, simple. The theme is seemingly used a lot, but after installing a few plugins, he seemed to of made it his own.

Good luck to Nomar on his continued quest to climb the internet ranks, and his website directory (which this blog is a member of by the way). Don’t forget to check out his contest, you may get 25$ richer.

On online newspaper has just been launched for Brisbane (Queensland Australia) called Brisbane Times and the site will feature a number of blogs. Nothing unusual about that to be sure however it is the first opportunity for me as a new media professional to witness a group of mass media opinion blogs starting from scratch.

When setting up the blogs they have ensured that they have a head liner act, in this case it is the author John Birmingham whom I do love (and is a blogger – check out his personal blog here) in addition to several other blogs with various themes.

Amongst them there is a man’s perspective or I should probably better define it as a stereotyped ‘blokes’ blog. Another is a Sex and the City clone, both of these are tried and tested formulas and should pick up a following. It was another of the blogs that really caught my eye though and I must admit it’s through morbid curiosity that I have added it to my feed reader.

Viva Bris Vegas suffers (and to be fair I think they all suffer) from it’s own promises. This one promises that if it is fun that you like, this is the place. The blog is written by a gentleman named Conal Hanna and the site includes the “drinking, bar-hopping and clubbing” writers photograph. I’m sure Conal is a really nice guy and he probably does bar hop and go clubbing but that photo makes him look like an obvious ‘suit’.

If you are going to be writing about clubs, gigs and where to party in Brisbane I want to believe that you actually live it. The problem here is that I just don’t believe him. Not one word of it. It’s artificial.

None of these blogs feel real. It certainly isn’t the real life story of Sally as she makes her way through the dating scene. People aren’t following her tips on fashion as she sees it because the blog rings true and speaks from the heart of a single girl in the city.

We are being fed a plastic prepackaged product written by journalists designed to mimic an authentic blog. My advice to any news site that wants to launch a digestible natural product take a look at the existing talented bloggers already out there pounding the blog pavement.

Don’t try and grow a tomato in a lab when you can go and pick one from the vine!

I refuse to believe there isn’t a blogger out there writing about clubs and music in Brisbane already. In fact a less than exhaustive search of Google found the excellent brispop.com as one example (maybe Conal has contributed in the past as the site does have a lot of contributors).

So go and find a blogger who is living that life! Because the people out there in the Valley going to gigs and clubs aren’t going to buy your mass produced plastic posts!

This should be a lesson to the business community too, if you are going to enter the world of business blogging don’t just let someone in your PR department issue press releases and adverts as your blog. Go out and get someone who is experienced at writing blogs naturally or someone who is naturally an advocate or expert in your business.

If you can get both that’s great!!!

A final note I do wish the bloggers at Bris Times all the best they are doing their job and I hope their natural voices do come out!

Next up: Your first post – are first impressions that important (prob tomorrow or the next day)

I have often heard of mothers teaching their infants sign language so that the baby has more power to communicate before he/she is able to speak. I always thought it was a great idea and wanted to try it out with my own children. Of course when I had my baby real life got in the way and since it was a necessity I didn’t try it out. Then my sister had a deaf baby. He was born a couple weeks after my baby but we didn’t find out he was deaf for a couple months. Now that she knows he is deaf and can only hear 80% with hearing aids she is teaching him sign language so I have finally started to teach my daughter a few things. First of all, since I don’t know sign language I have had to learn a little in order to pass it on to my daughter. The greatest website  for this is the ASL (American Sign Language) website because you pick the word you want to learn and it shows you a mini movie of how to make the sign. I have also learned some signs from my sister. I have used some of these signs for many months with my daughter but it has just recently been that she has started signing them back to me. She is very good at signing the word more, coincidentally because she always wants more food. She also will sign the word milk. We are currently working on Please and Thank You and names of various foods we eat. She picked up milk really fast so I think she will catch on to these other signs fairly quickly. I just have to get in the habit of using the signs when we are saying those words. It has been really fun and it has made meal times a lot less stressful since she has been able to tell us when she wants more of something. I would recommend mom’s to try this out with their children that are not yet able to speak. It is a wonderful way to communicate with your child!

Thank you Lee for creating our newest Blog about your Blog button. We recently got a great deal on advertising space from our good friends over at Crystal Coast Tech, so we needed a new button. (Stay tuned for a little more information about their site in the next week) Feel free to use this button if you would like to advertise our site. We are also exploring advertising opportunities if you are interested in selling us some space.

We have also changed the look to our About Us Page so check that out and let me know what you think.

Our Blog Competition is still running, we only have one current review entered. Remember you can blog about anything you want about us. We are not requiring a positive review. I just want it to be well written, well its a competition, so you want it to be well written. You can write about how you feel. We may also start giving out $ just for reviews. Anywhere from 2-5$ after this competition ends. I’ll update on that as we get to it.

Check out our ad on advolcano, we hope to sell some space on our site using their services as we are currently not approved with TLA. You can also negotiate with us directly if you’d prefer and would like to buy space on our page.

Great to see 22 comments for yesterdays Comment Friday. I’ve finished visiting everyones blog that commented, it’s tough to pick the ‘winner’.

I followed up on Ryan’s comment and we even decided to exchange feeds, so now he is a subscriber to Blog about your Blog. I hope he can successfully implement a few BAYB ideas onto his own blog. His comment made me visit his blog first, I guess it intrigued me most to find out what type of blog he has.

Thanks for commenting Ryan. Don’t forget to drop by Ryan’s Blog and leave him a comment too.

Hope to see more comments next week, thanks everyone for coming by yesterday and leaving us one. Maybe you will be featured next week.

Friday seems to come so fast, seems like yesterday I was writing last week’s Comment Friday topic!

If you are new around here, comment friday is a fun and simple idea. Leave us a comment about anything you want to. By leaving a comment, first you will have your blog visited by me, and you may even get a link out of it. I will select a blog from the comment list to be linked to and have their link on our blogroll, until next friday. Our Friday’s have been catching on, don’t miss out.

Aside from our comments, we have a great MyBlogLog Community that has reached 244 members! Amazing!

Our first Blog Carnival is also coming up, and we already have 15 entries!

But our best feature right now has to be the blog competition, where you can earn money just by reviewing our blog! Feel like 10 dollars in your paypal? Blog about us!

We’ve got a lot of things going on, with plenty more on the way.

Don’t forget to leave us a comment. Your blog could get linked right here.

I had a few links saved of posts I read that I liked over the past week or so. Here they are with a small description, expect more next week!

Interesting And Useful Blog Posts by Mike

Article on basically what I am doing right now, and thats linking to other links with linking! Hah! Mike shares a few articles about money making and blog help, from other bloggers.

I talked too much by People in the Sun

Referring to a site where you can get your blog reviewed, I talk 2 much, its tough to get a good review out of those girls.

Blog-Off For Breast Cancer by Carly

Basically what the title states. Great cause, go check out the program.

A Q&A With Myself by Matt

Pretty fun post, he intereviewed himself. Got a few laughs out of it.

How To Write An Awesome “About” Page by Philip

Inspired me to tackle our own About page. It’s on my to do list, after this post.

Ann Coulter Calls John Edwards The F-Word by Scott

I hadn’t heard about this until I read it here. Now it’s been all over the news.

Review My Blog Link Back by Jason

Great way to build links. I hope to implement this idea on our blog, which I am trying to do with the blog competition. Basically trading links, writing a small review about the site. I’ve noticed their feed count has already increased after having a few successful reviews.