I just recently started a new blog titled “My Quest to Make a Living as an Artist“. This will chronicle efforts to make a living as an artist using my two stlyes of art, surrealism and comic book superhero painting. This week a commission auction I had up on Ebay for a superhero painting was won by a repeat customer of mine. The funny thing is I haven’t shipped a commission painting I just finished for him yet. I am also working out details for commission for a guy in London who saw the auction on Ebay, but wanted something a little different. So I want to take this time to thank Ebay for their help in my quest. If you get a chance check out “My Quest to Make a Living as an Artist“.

For a while I was on a quest. A quest to be on MyBlogLog’s top 50 community list. That quest hasn’t vanished, just slowed down. As the website grows, it has also become more difficult to get on that elite top 50 list. You need over 500 members to be featured.

For our traffic and subscriber level, 300 members is a nice accomplishment. Just as I am proud of what Blog about your Blog has become, I am proud of our MyBlogLog Community.

Here are a few tips that I used and others have as well, to get MyBlogLog members.

Post about MyBlogLog! Let your readers know you are interested in getting members. It only takes seconds to join and if they are an avid reader they will be happy to.

Promote! Just a MyBlogLog widget isn’t enough anymore. Everyone has them! Be unique. We use a banner in rotation that asks to Join Our Community. Even if you don’t want one on your sidebar, possibly attach a link to any of your posts asking for more members. You can take The Pisstakers approach and involve MyBlogLog into your blog weekly. They host a MyBlogLog Sunday, that incorporates MyBlogLog, as well as a bit of link love. It even got them a mention on the MyBlogLog Blog.

Be Active! Essentially, you get what you put in. The more active you are the more members and traffic you can recieve from MyBlogLog. Once a day, try leaving comments to your most recent visitors (this was a good success for us). I would go to our recent visitors and thank them for visiting as well as urge them to join our community if they hadn’t done so yet.

Offer Incentives! Contests can definitely kick up your member total. Ask for more members and have a drawing for a prize. Cash or a giftcard is always good to give away, but you can possibly get more members if you can be unique and give away something fun. I haven’t ran a MyBlogLog contest….YET… but we do have something in the works. However, we are offering a drawing for a retro-mini fridge just for subscribing to our feed.

Existential Ventures is giving away a Canon Photo Printer when they get 500 members. That’s quite a lot of members to ask for, but it is also a great prize. Just like the rest of us, they have their eyes on the top 50 communities list.

In the excitement of our newest contest, I haven’t had to chance to post about our blog review competition.

We recently received our 6th entry from Make Money Online with Malaysia Love AGLOCO. Weird title I guess, if it’s wrong let me know. Anyways, it was a great review, a front runner on my ballot.

Can you beat that?

Remember the prizes are cash via paypal, 1st place 10$ and 2nd and 3rd gets 5$. If there is no further interest after this post, I will call the contest early and start the voting. It’s not too hard to write up 100 words about us, easy money!

Well, we posted Comment Friday late, and still got over 20 comments. So close to that elusive 30 comments, I can taste it!

This week was an easy choice, I’ve chosen PolliwogsPond to be featured as comment friday blog of the week. Polli has been a great supporter of this blog and other blogs in our community. She even sent quite a few visitors over to Comment Friday.

Polli recently launched the pond officially into the blogosphere, but she isn’t new to the blogging scene. Within the first couple days of officially launching her blog, she won Ed’s MyBlogLog contest, as well as got tagged to post about her obsessions. Polli is quickly climbing the blogosphere ranks, and I am happy to be able to feature her this week.

Thanks Polli and thank you to everyone for commenting! I’ve linked to a lot of the people who has been participating the past few fridays, we need some new blood! With that, I hope we can achieve 30 comments together.

We finally got the chance to blog about the Bloggers Choice Awards and get paid for it. Bloggers Choice is a new website that will be giving out blog awards for several different categories. We are currently up for Best Blog about Blogging, but it definitely is a tough competition.

hanks to Mike, we are currently offering blogs to get more chance of getting voted for, you can see by visiting our two posts about the Bloggers Choice Awards.

Voting has started, so get your blog listed asap, it will only get harder. Voting stops May 22nd (my birthday) and the winners will be “officially” announced at PostieCon. I definitely hope there will be mention of 2nd and 3rd place, because some blogs will be very difficult to beat. By doing that it will give some of the smaller blogs, who worked harder on the awards to get some extra exposure.
If you have started voting, make sure to vote for Blog about your Blog, and the rest of the blogs in our community. To beat the big blogs, we have to work together.

I love the idea of awards, and this is a great way to vote. You may remember Blog about your Blog had it’s own blog of the year voting at the beginning of this year. It was great fun, and everyone got a little link love. Let’s hope bloggers choice will be a big hit and beneficial for everyone.

It’s that time again, 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 be linked to and have their link on our blogroll, until next friday.

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 ALMOST had 30 comments! I know Comment Friday is getting posted a little later than usual but I hope we can get break 30!

If you are up for a bloggers choice award, check out our posts about the awardsÂ

It was good to see the comments following my previous BAYB posts on the Bloggers Choice Awards.

As a small thank you to all of those who responded I have mentioned you on my own blog post today, together with links to your blogs and award URL’s. To view click here.

If nothing else, it’s another link to add to your Technorati total.Â

Thanks again.

Good luck,
Mike.
Mike’s Money Making Mission