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.

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.

Blogging is a great way to express yourself, and an efficient way to share your knowledge. Blogging is certainly attractive for many reasons. That is why I have been asking myself a question why people stop blogging. Why do they abandon the results of their hard work? Here are some reasons why people might stop blogging at some point:

1. They do not see enough people visiting their blog as they wished. They feel that their blog is somehow inadequate and not attractive. Being proud of your website is important, if you want others to appreciate it as well.
2. They abandon blogs because they decide to spend their time in some other way. Blogging is time consuming, so take that into account.
3. They do not make any money from their blog. This can be especially discouraging for people who pay a lot of money for hosting, web design, SEO, advertising, and other services.
4. They do not see the results of their work immediately. Blogging is not for everyone, as it requires patience and often some investment. Many people start seeing results after at least a few months of blogging.
5. People start too many blogs at the same time and later are not able to keep the pace.
6. Some bloggers are no longer interested in a topic that they chose in the beginning of their blogging life. It happens. In my opinion, blogging about something that you have passion for is crucial.

Last time I checked there was an estimate of 30 billion web pages on the Internet. It sounds quite impressive and the number is growing. The number of websites and blogs that are getting spammed is also growing, so webmasters are finding ways to combat spam. It has been stated that one of the reasons that webmasters are receiving spam is because they place their email address on their website. The problem is that spammers are crawling webpages in order to obtain any email address they can find, so that later they can send spam to that email. Often email addresses are also being sold to other spammers. One of the ways to protect yourself from your email being harvested like that is to implement a contact form on your website. This way people will still be able to contact you, but it will drastically reduce the amount of spam you are receiving. Generally, it is a good rule not to give away your email address in any public place. Sooner or later, spammers are going to find such email address and it is easier to prevent spam, then to fight with it. That is why using contact forms on websites is an excellent idea.

This time I want to give some practical advice about updating your blog regularly. It is easy to start a blog; however, it is a lot harder to update it on a regular basis. One of the main challenges is to find time to write a blog entry a few times per week. That is because it requires you to have a regular lifestyle. However, many bloggers agree that there is an easy way to solve this challenge. The solution is to write a few blog entries in advance. You can write them in Word or any other text editor, and later copy/paste them to your blog without any problems. If you write your blog entries like that, you have to watch out that your blog entry will not be outdated when you post it. If your blog offers general type of advice, it will not be a problem, as entries will probably not get outdated very fast. On the other hand, this idea is quite useless when you think about news blogs, which need fresh content. So as I said, it is important to know whether the post you are going to write is going to get outdated soon. Anyway, if you want your blog to be popular, but you do not have time to write a few blog entries per week or per month, then you should probably re-evaluate whether you want to be blogging at all. Of course, you can still be blogging from time to time if the visitors of your blog are just your closest friends.

Bloggers strive for more visitors, but they should also keep in mind how long visitors stay on the site, how many pages they visit etc. One of the ways to measure such performance is to determine the bounce rate. Bounce rate is in a sense a measure how interesting other pages of your site are to your visitors. A bounce is when a visitor lands on one page of your site, but does not visit other pages on your site. If you want to find out your bounce rate, you might want to use Google Analytics, as it displays your bounce rate, along with an average time spent on your website. But how important is bounce rate? Well first of all, it provides certain information that you can take advantage of and maybe make some appropriate changes to your website. On the other hand, I would not worry too much about it, because blogs often tend to have a quite high bounce rate due to the fact that at least a few newest posts are displayed on the main page. On the other hand, if you are happy as a blogger, and if you are happy with what you do, you will not worry if many people are reading your posts. If you write for a few people only, like your family members or friends, your bounce rate will not be as important to you. At least, it should not be as important as for people who try to have the most popular blog out there.

A lot of bloggers are worried about others stealing their posts, and posting them on some other blogs without permission or any kind of acknowledgment who is the real author of the post. One of the reasons that some people keep doing such things is that it is a lot easier to have rich content on your blog just by copy/pasting, rather than writing posts yourself. Many people think that nobody will notice that the content was taken from another website, and they feel pretty safe doing so on a regular basis.

Unfortunately for them, there are tools to look for plagiaristic content and one of such tools is copyscape.com. It is a website that basically searches the Internet for copies of your website/blog entries and lists the results for you to analyze. It is a free service and a lot of websites like, for example, getafreelancer.com take advantage out of it to check if submitted articles are original. Keep in mind that if somebody copies your blog entry to a website that is not indexed by Google, copyscape.com might not detect it. On the other hand, people will not be able to find such a website easily anyway. If you are seriously interested in protecting your website, you might want to put a “Page Protected by Copyscape Do Not Copy” widget on your blog. Other bloggers did so, and while it will not prevent anyone from copying content from your blog, it will let them know that you know how to check for duplicate content.

There are many interesting plug-ins that blogs have installed these days. I like visiting blogs that implement the top commentators plug-in on their site, as this way I have the opportunity to be listed on a blogs homepage by commenting a lot on it. This is a feature that can encourage readers to engage into an active discussion on a blog, and reward them by giving them SEO benefits and possibly traffic. I have to admit that as a regular commentator myself when I am deciding which blog to visit and comment on, I am much more prone to choose a blog that will allow me to appear as a top commentator. One of the reasons that is the case is that this way I can feel like a contributor. Commenting on blogs is definitely something that a lot of bloggers might be interested in doing, not only for fun, but also to acquire some backlinks. A lot of people probably do not care whether they appear as top commentators, but it has its benefits. Many people prefer not to leave any comments; however, leaving comments on a blog that you have just visited can give you something that you need: popularity, backlinks, and even friends. I encourage each one of you to leave a comment on various blogs from time to time. This is also an excellent way to get in touch with other bloggers, and get involved in various events in the blogosphere.