There’s a major global event taking place on 20th May, when many thousands of people will gather at twelve locations around the globe to meditate and pray for global peace and harmony with nature. What makes this particularly exciting is that the results are to be measured by the Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University, which uses computers to measure the effects of human consciousness. The idea is to prove whether such events can have a real, measurable, beneficial effect or are simply pie in the sky. To find out more about this event, including details of where the gatherings are taking place, see the latest post at The Secret Of Life.

Recently I blogged about How We Got 300 MyBlogLog Members. Today we reached our 400th member! I am very surprised to see we got another 100 members in less than a month, with little promotion of it. I appreciate all of our members, and I will be running a contest after we giveaway our mini fridge.

Speaking of our mini-fridge giveaway, we will now give it away when we reach 150 rss feed subscribers, we currently have 118. After that we will be promoting our MyBlogLog Community and give away more prizes, with even more chances to win

Looking for a few tips to get 400 MyBlogLog members? Here is a few excerpts from our most recent MyBlogLog post.

Post about MyBlogLog! Let your readers know you are interested in getting members.

Promote! Just a MyBlogLog widget isn’t enough anymore. Everyone has them! Be unique.

Be Active! Essentially, you get what you put in. The more active you are the more members and traffic you can recieve from MyBlogLog.

Offer Incentives! Contests can definitely increase your member total. Ask for more members and have a drawing for a prize.

Read the original tips in length at How We Got 300 MyBlogLog Members

I had a revelation today about blogging when I picked up a copy of National Geographic, a good old-fashioned real life magazine. I wish I had made the connection between online and offline publishing when I first started to blog

I have never written a magazine or published anything in print, so the whole concept of publishing on-line (blogging) was a bit of a mystery. And to be honest, when I started to read up on blogging, it was like a trip back to schooldays, studying a topic you don’t quite have an affinity for. All the thousands of words and articles I read about how to set up a blog, how to market it, how often to publish etc etc, it was a bit like gobbledeygook that I sort of understood, but didn’t.

But picking up the National Geographic magazine today, I had one of those moments where lots of things became clear. Suddenly I could literally see how easy it should be to decide on the content and direction of a blog.

A good title

What can be more telling about what is inside than what is on the outside? On the cover, the name National Geographic speaks volumes. A blog title and ideally a blog’s URL should speak volumes too

A homepage that reinforces the title

Just reading the titles of 4 articles advertised on the cover of National Geographic, it was obvious that the writers are focussed on environmental topics and situations going on in exotic places around the globe. A blog homepage should quickly convey a clear message of material related to the blog title.

Choose a field that excites you

When you read an article in National Geographic, you can tell the authors are passionate about what they write. Bloggers need to convey the same excitement. Also, there should be no shortage of ideas for further material. It is hard to imagine National Geographic not being published because “our writers have run out of ideas!”

Be an expert in your field

The material in National Geographic is researched. Sometimes it is too indepth for casual readers, but there is always a variety of articles for all levels of expertise, attention span and interest in minutiae.Just because your topic is complicated, no reason not to make it easy to read or follow.

Clean theme

The material in National Geographic is presented in a clear format that young and old eyes alike can appreciate. There is white space, little fuss, the font is readable black on white, there are headings, blockquotes, beautiful images with tags, titles… This all applies in a blog too.

Publish regularly

National Geographic publish articles on a regular basis. Once a month isn’t once a day, but you know that every 15th of the month, or whatever deal you have, that magazine is going to arrive at your house.

What more do potential bloggers need to know about the theory behind blogging?

I’ve just posted over at Quit Your Day Job using the exact same title and since this is almost my second home I thought I might do so over here too.

Don’t you hate it when you discover a blog that you really like and then it doesn’t update itself for weeks on end? Well I do! Which is why instead of just going silent I wanted to let everything know that I am going to be taking a break for a couple of weeks from blogging from my main sites.

The reason being quite frankly I’m just so bloody tired!

I contribute to a number of blogs which takes surprisingly not that much time but it does drain a bit of the energy and when you have that other thing called your life in play too it eventually catches up to you.

Unfortunately I know what the result will be in regards to my stats which is a real shame because last month was a great month for Quit Your Day Job with over 13000 unique visitors. Whenever you don’t post for a week or so the numbers tend to drop.

I will probably still be updating Urban Cultivation and no doubt doing a refit of Crypt Hunter. But I’ve got two units at uni to finish up and a couple of interviews coming up.

So thanks everyone I’ll see you all in a couple of weeks!!! In the meantime I’ll leave you with a picture that made me laugh the other day!

Just wanted to wish everyone a cinco de mayo. Took my trip to the liquor store, you know I am celebrating! I just got all of the essentials….

Enjoy

Comment Friday has become a nice success, and has really gotten a variety of readers to our blog. This week I posted forum topics, encouraging people to stop by and comment. The response again was great, we received a small decrease in comments, but more people interested in hosting their own Comment Friday.

One of those people happen to be our winner Love All Books. They decided to host their own version of Comment Friday, and linked back to us. As promised we linked back to them in our Comment Friday Post, but I felt that wasn’t enough.

Check out Love All Books for book reviews and recommendations. Make sure to stop by their blog (as well as ours) for next week’s Comment Friday.

Comment Friday is a fun and simple idea. Leave us a comment about anything you want. By leaving a comment, 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 have a small post written and featured as our comment friday winner.

We have many of the same commentors participating weekly, we are getting some great and fun discussions. Not only am I visiting blogs, but other people are checking you out as well.

Last week we had 40 comments, and this week I know we can get 50!

Last Fridays blog of the week was Windy’s Food Corner. She started Comment Friday off early with a great topic. She even offered to make me Lemon Chicken! hah.

This Friday, the blog of the week could be yours!

If you’re interested in hosting a comment friday, just make sure to link back to us, or this post giving us credit. Then you can be added here, linking to your comment friday. Currently Love All Books is hosting their own Comment Friday.