There has been some discussion lately concerning the most popular blogs on the Internet. Someone noticed that the most popular blogs are usually those that have started the earliest as this way they had a big advantage. For example, problogger.net was one of the first, if not the first blog dedicated to the subject of blogging, and his blog still strives as one of the most popular. I think this can be explained quite easily when you look at the facts. When problogger was starting there was not a lot of competition, so even if he was making some small mistakes there were no other blogs to pose a serious threat to him. You took advantage of this time when there was less competition to learn from his own mistakes. On the other hand, if you are starting a new blog these days, then be prepared for a lot of competition and even if you do not make mistakes you will have a harder time attracting readers. On the bright side, there are already many successful blogs out there from which you may want to learn on how to achieve success. Read other blogs for at least a few days before starting your own.

If you are a blogger, then there are a lot of things that you can learn from newspapers. When it comes to newspapers, usually space is premium. This means that an 100 word article with the same information as an article with 500 words is a lot more preferable. Too often bloggers forget about this important rule, and try to write posts which are simply too long. We live in times when people value their time, because there are hundred things to do that you can choose from. When you write articles, make sure that they are short and concise. In my case, I always try to present some advice or information in my posts, and I make them short enough so that people can read them within a minute or two. Personally, I am really bored by blogs where posts are too long, because I am usually visiting blogs to acquire some information, not to fill up my time. One the other hand, all those who read blogs for fun will appreciate if your posts are long, especially if your readers are your friends that enjoy reading things that you write. Be sure to check who your readers are before starting blogging and make sure that your posts are not too short and not too long.

Some time ago there was a blogger who asked an interesting question to the top bloggers:
“If you had 2-hours a day to devote to no-cost, off-blog (even off-line) marketing for your blog, what would you do?”
I read his article, and I selected some interesting responses, so here I present them to you in a concise manner:

-Leo Babuata from ZenHabits in also in favor of writing guest posts. He says that there is no better form of advertising, free or otherwise.
-Darren Rowse, author of ProBlogger claims that guest posting in the same niche is the best way to market your blog. He said that he would interact with other bloggers and their readers.
-Penelope Trunk from Brazen Careerist says that there are two offline things that are great for promoting his blog. This includes talking to people at parties and while speaking in public.
-Anita Campbell from SmallBizTrends would engage in social media marketing while using content sharing sites, social networking, and even community based sites.
-Muhammad Saleem from MuhammadSaleem would socialize with other bloggers in different ways including guest writing and commenting.
-Liz Strauss from Successful-Blog gave in my opinion the most elaborate response as she said that she would use StumpleUpon, comment on blogs, talk on the telephone with bloggers, speak at a local rotary and conference, or even buy a weekly hour of live radio time among other things.

I hope this article gave you some ideas, but remember that content is king, so it is good to first work on the content before you get heavily involved in promoting your site. If you have any additional ideas for building traffic for free, let me know.

It seems that many business owners quit blogging. Are you interested what the reasons are? Are we really that different from business bloggers? We also try to “sell a product”, but in our case it is our blog itself. Here are the reasons why many business people give up on blogging:

1. They are not happy with the amount of comments left by visitors.
2. According to them, they do not have enough subscribers.
3. They do not observe an increase in traffic coming to their main website.
4. They find it difficult to come up with fresh new content for the blog every day or week. Blogs that are not being updated often might not serve their purpose.
5. They cannot work out how to promote products and services via their blog. It is not that easy to promote different products from various industries on a blog.

Maintaining a blog costs money. That is why if there are going to be negligible benefits, then it is a wise choice for a business to delete such a blog. Regular bloggers are in a different position, as they are not oriented on increasing their income. They are rather focused on having influence over other people and interacting with users all over the world. That is why there are some blogs that have been out for years, and they are still performing very well.

I have discussed the topic of attracting visitors in the past; however, this time I have an additional idea for attracting new visitors to your blog, namely organizing giveaways. Giving away things is a certain way to attract visitors to your site. Who does not like to receive things for free? Obviously, people love things for free, but most bloggers are not willing to give for free unless they benefit from it. It may be a link or review, but the truth is that giving away things for free from time to time will increase the number of visitors to your site, and some of those visitors might be really grateful. Additionally, if you do not ask for anything in return, sometimes you will receive it anyway. That is because people will appreciate your good will. You might receive a lot of links to a post where you mentions giveaways, so you will also benefit when it comes to your Page Rank.

There are some bloggers who do not like this method, because they argue that it is not cost-effective. They claim that, for example, giving away 10 books might attract visitors, but the cost of those 10 books might be higher than the possible gain. My response would be that you can also give away things that do not cost anything at all. This includes link backs and any services you can provide.

Like every other serious profession, blogging has its own code of conduct. It might be unofficial, but it is still valid and should be observed to maintain order in blogosphere. By observing this code on conduct we can make sure that nobody is offended by what we are doing. There are many do’s and dont’s, some of them are more obvious than others. Let me list a few rules that I find interesting and worth applying.

1. If you provided your email address as a way to contact you, respond to emails that come to your inbox. If you receive some unpleasant ones, try responding to them as well. Obviously, you do not have to answer spam messages.
2. Check your spam folder on a regular basis. Your spam filter might have classified some of the valuable comments as trash for some reason. Do not let any valuable comment unnoticed.
3. Approve the comments if you use a comment moderation feature. There is nothing more disappointing for somebody who left a comment to see his feedback unapproved for many days.

Even such small things can make a difference, and you will definitely have a better reputation if you stick to these guidelines. After all, blogging has a lot to do with interaction with other people.

This time I would like to discuss guest bloggers and content stealing. A well-written guest post might be considered valuable content according to readers. This is especially true if the topic of the post relates closely to the main topic of the blog. So in this case, I would like to discuss a situation where a guest blogger copies posts written by somebody else, and claims that he wrote them. Not only if somebody finds out about this, all of his guest posts might be removed from different blogs, but it would also be a huge blow to the reputation of the blogger himself.

Reading other bloggers guest posts and writing similar ones is not content stealing in my opinion. However, if one clearly copies and pastes another person’s posts, then this is definitely content stealing. He should worry about somebody finding out about this. It might be a good idea to list all resources that you use to write a post. Did you get inspired after reading a newspaper article? Feel free to indicate that in your post. This way everyone will know that you write your own articles and your articles are also going to look more professional. After all, all of the dissertations being written in universities often indicate various sources where that particular information.

Some time ago, I read an article about blogging and there were some interesting numbers listed there. The article stated that Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, indexed around 150 million blogs, up from 100,000 just a few years ago. It seems that a new blog is created every few seconds, which adds up to thousands new blogs a day, hundreds of thousands of posts a day, and thousands of updates an hour. As you see, the growth rate of blogs is really impressive. But what are really blogs? I think that blogs are lowering the cost of publishing, enabling the rise of content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals. I am not saying that some bloggers do not go pro, but most bloggers are only blogging part-time. Blogs are becoming more and more popular with each passing day. One of the reasons is that very often bloggers allow their visitors to ask them questions, leave comments, etc. A user that visits a blog can actually interact with the writer and that is not possible in case of newspapers.

The article had the conclusion that blogging is still in its early days and it is analogous to where the Web was in 1995 and 1996, so it is not clear how it will turn out. However, as a blogger myself, I am predicting that the popularity of blogging will not cease to grow and some bloggers will become even more influential.

Sometimes bloggers decide to buy another blog, because they want to expand their network of blogs. In some cases something about their current blog is not working out as planned. In such a scenario it is important to realize that unfortunately many Internet users might try to fake their page rank. Since PR is one the main ways to measure a sites performance, then some webmasters might want to take advantage out of that fact. Some of them use 301 or 302 redirects that point their sites to sites with a high PR. This in practical terms means that when you visit the desired site you might see a high PR on your toolbar, but this will be a PR of another site. Yes I know, this is cheap tactics, but whenever you are buying a new website or blog, make sure you are not buying it solely for PR. Do some research before buying it. These type of scams also made me think how come Page Rank became so important for webmasters. I am sure there could be many other ways to measure a sites performance including number of visitors, quality of content, number of posts, and incoming links. It seems thought for a lot of people it is a lot easier to simply check a number such as PR, instead of researching the value of a site in a more in-depth way. There are many things that can make a site valuable, so keep that in mind.

There are many decisions a blogger has to make. When it comes to blogging, an important decision that bloggers have to face is choosing a niche topic for their blog. Some people do it consciously, others do it without even knowing it, but all of us in some way decide what do we want to blog about. It is tempting to choose a niche topic that we believe is popular, as we will expect many visitors to come to our website. Unfortunately, this is not always true, as starting a blog about politics would normally attract many people, but you should take into account that the competition is very steep. That is why it is a good idea to consider different niches, even those that you think nobody would be interested in. Personally, I do not believe that there is a niche which no one is interested in. Go to your local library, and take a look at home many magazines are available, and you must agree that many of the topics do not seem interesting to an average person like bathroom magazines for example. Having said that, if magazines like this exist on the market, it means that there is a need for them. This applies to blogs as well. Choose a topic that you like, and I am sure there are going to be people that will like it as well.