I’ve encountered one or two blogs recently that I’ve noticed have turned off their comments. I don’t really get that? Why would you do such a thing? Leaving comments is such a large part of what makes a blog.

It’s the promise of web 2.0 – complete interaction. Don’t just passively read content like a lot of the lurkers here do. Interact with the medium. By all means have moderation in place. Don’t let someone hijack your blog and change the tone with swearing or stupid comments (I mean really stupid comments).

But it is important to the life of your blog to keep that connection with your readers. If I see a blog and I can’t comment on it I feel cheated. Like the transaction didn’t complete itself.

The other gripe I have about comments are when you will only allow blogger account holders or wordpress only members etc. This irritates me even further than if you have just turned them off (mmmm actually maybe I’m irritated equally).

There is a responsibility as good blogging community members:

• As readers to comment on a story or a post as if you were having a conversation with the writer even if it’s just to tell them that you agree. As a side point there is enough negativity in the world so if you’ve got nothing nice to say don’t say anything. I’m not saying you have to comment on every little thing you come across but i think if you are even slightly entertained by the piece maybe you should say something.
• As writers to allow comments and to respond to comments. I know people who might get 60 odd comments on a post and still respond to them all! It makes your reader feel noticed and important and it’s building that relationship. But reserve the right to delete objectional comments. And that’s something that you and the tone of your blog need to decide on.

Hopefully some people will feel moved enough to comment on this post purely because of it’s topic. I guess I’ll count myself lucky if I get three comments.

I will take a moment though to send out some kudos to one of the other authors here who even though she was really busy at the time, she posted a round up post mentioning what was going on in all the blogs that she frequents because it was important to her to let her blogging community know that she was still there and noticing us! Good on you Lucky!

Actually whilst i have the bag of kudos out I’ll throw some Matts way. He really busts himself keeping this place running and making sure people are getting their blogs noticed and I don’t know if everyone who visits here realizes how much work he puts in! So good on you too Matt!!

“My Blog-Fu is strong”

Those of you who know me already know that I’m in the midst of moving out of our house (in under 12 days) thanks to the lease not being renewed. What better time to launch a new blog project!!

Unfortunately it’s just a little poor timing but I couldn’t sit on it any longer I had to get it out into the blogosphere!

Pop Culture Heroines

The blog is a multiple author blog that will feature essays and articles discussing female characters in popular culture. Often these characters are dismissed as not having substance or sex objects without looking at their cultural significance or depth.

We are accepting submissions – I’ve already managed to line up some great writers but we’re always looking for more of course!!!

Another interesting fact that may be of interest especially around here is that I do not intend on submitting this to any blog exchanges. I don’t have the time to surf those things so I’m going to take the time that I would have normally spent surfing on those blogsurf bars into spreading the word and getting top notch content on there!

I’ll keep everyone posted on how we do without the exchanges!

On every page of The Pisstakers we have a single advert space in a prominent position above the fold. With each new page refresh, a new image appears. It currently displays our site designer’s logo Bonsai Studio and some filler graphics.

As part of a traffic building plan, we are now offering a spot on the loop to bloggers who have had their sites reviewed on The Pisstakers.

Visitors who click on your logo will be taken to your review, and from there they can visit your blog, if they so wish. It is a free offer that will run from now until the end of March, at which point we will review what is going on.

On current traffic, you will be seen on at least 1000 pages a month. We just ask you to write a quickie post on your site about The Pisstakers and submit it to the same social bookmark sites that appear at the bottom of our blog posts. If you are interested Contact Ed with a URL to your logo and a link to your post on the Pisstakers. There are 10 spots only, so don’t be backward in coming forward.

Thanks

The blogging world is changing, google adsense and affiliate programs aren’t cutting for the average blogger.

The age of “sponsored posts” is upon us. Bloggers everywhere seem to be using this for extra income on their blogs. A few sponsored posts and you can buy a domain and webhosting. To meet the demands, many new services and websites are becoming available.

Why is it so popular?

There are many upsides when participating in paid per post advertising. The biggest may simply be that it’s guaranteed money. You don’t need to sell anything or really promote it at all. You get a topic to write about, and you get paid. That simple. The payouts are usually a flat and fair rate. The posts are also usually quick and easy to write. I could probably write several posts in an hour if I had the offers.

Why are advertisers investing in paid per post ads?

It builds a lot of links to their websites. In turn, that makes these websites get higher search engine rankings. By adding keywords in the paid per post ads, they also build that keyword to hit on their website. When I begin to further advertise Blog about your Blog paid per post advertising is definitely something we will strongly consider.

Is sponsored posting right for you?

It may be, especially if you want to earn some extra money and your blog doesn’t get huge amounts of traffic. I would imagine a blogger would need to do fewer and fewer paid posts as traffic increases. For those big-time bloggers your price per post will go up meaning less posts.

Where can I find these websites?

There are several popular websites that offer to pay you for posting about a certain product or website.
I have found blogitive to be the best for this. They payout weekly and have a decent amount of offers, you just have to actively check their website to find it.

PayPerPost is apparently the most popular, but I have yet to be accepted there, so I can’t offer much insight about it. I do know they have started to limit how many offers you can accept per day, but that gives everyone opportunity to post.

Blogsvertise send you offers via email, which you get to accept or reject. They hand pick who gets the offers, so you may get a lot, then none at all.
Lastly, LoudLaunch is brand new and I have yet to try them out. I’ve seen offers from 3-5$ here, and they seemed reasonable.

Any questions or comments on this I would love to hear them. Do you use sponsored posts? If you haven’t before has this article changed your mind?

 I’ve been trying out a few smaller money making programs this week and have been reporting about them on my blog, Mike’s Money Making Mission.

Today I joined TreasureTrooper to test out their claims. They write that if you: take surveys, sample products, signup for free trials, join clubs,  you’ll get  paid for doing so, and that there are over $2000 in offers!

When I looked at the site, sure enough, there were 434 offers of where you could make money ranging from 50c to $50. (Some of the offers are for the USA only). You have to join first to see these.

I just did the one offer, to see how it works, and earnt $1.50 in about five minutes.

A good money making point to   TreasureTrooper is that if you refer others you get 20% of their earnings plus another 5% on the second level.  I’ve seen that some members have made up to $650 and maybe more, so there are income possibilities.

It’s not a program to be taken too seriously but it could earn members a few dollars (paid monthly, minimum $20).

Good luck,
Mike.
Mike’s Money Making Mission
Mike’s Business Articles
Successful & Profitable Blogging

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.