This list isn’t in any particular order, but it’s something I’ve wanted to post about for a long time. I hate Blogger/Blogspot for a whole bunch of reasons, but since that just sounds like an exaggeration when I’m talking to clients, I want to list out all the reasons why. These were collected from around the internet, as well as my own head.

• People who blog on Blogger/Blogspot have the (default) option of requiring a reader to have a blogger/blogspot blog in order to leave a comment. It’s surprising how many people actually enforce this - and I’ve found several well-written blogs that I can’t comment on, simply because I refuse to set up a blog I’ll never use just to do so.
• They use “nofollow” by default, so you can’t even allow your regular readers/commenters to get a link back from you as a Blogger/Blogspot blog owner. Of course, this is all because of the next reason:
• TONS of spam. It’s mainly because Blogger/Blogspot is a free service, and spammers are cheap bastards.
• Unstable servers. The site appears to go down a lot, for bloggers and readers alike.
• Images automatically insert themselves at the top of the post, messing up layouts of content, and have to be re-aligned and re-published to fix.
• Their CAPTCHA service is ridiculous. All the letters and numbers are swirled and compressed together, and it almost never works the first time, even if you can make out the word.
• Blogger is owned by Google. Not that I have anything against Google (really), but Google owns a lot of online sites and services that they just haven’t either done anything with since purchase, or they’ve let slide into oblivion since purchase. I think they’ve had great intentions, but just dropped them for bigger and better things.
• Feeds don’t update regularly, and when they do, you never know if you’ll get full feeds or if it’ll revert to default partial feeds.
• It’s free. Yes, there are tons of great free services online, but for less than $4 a month, you can get a fully hosted, fully supported blog of your own using WordPress. No ugly bar at the top, no limits to your layout or design, tons of FREE plugins and FREE themes and FREE everything else you need except the $4 a month hosting. If you’re serious about your blogging, cough up the $4 a month already and you’ll eventually make it back with a little monetization, I promise. I have one blog I barely update that makes me about $300 a year still. It’s worth the $48 a year, isn’t it? (If you’re that hardup and want a free blog, at least use WordPress.com instead of Blogger.) But still, there’s nothing like having 100% customization rights on your own self-hosted blog - and NO free service allows for that. NONE OF THEM.
• According to the Blogger Status page, the image/photo uploading feature is having problems they can’t seem to get a grip on. Isn’t that nice?
• “Flagging” can be abused. Let’s say you write something pretty harsh, and enough people get up behind each other to flag you for “inappropriate content” of some kind. I know, I know… it’s supposed to be analyzed by humans, but what if they don’t like what you had to say? I don’t like the idea of being victim to having my site censored by strangers, do you? (Of course, WordPress.com has been known to shut sites down too, but they’re a little more particular and exact about why (ie. stealing someone else’s content, promoting porn, hate-speech, etc.) and I suppose if you’ve got nothing to fear, that would be fine. But since Blogger is more well known, more spammers use it, and more flags go up, more moderators get blinded by all the stuff, and “oops!” your blog gets banished.)
• Blind assumption that using Blogger helps in the search engines (since it’s owned by one) makes Blogger patriots defiant about switching. This simply isn’t true, folks. Get over it. Do a search in Google for “mommy blog” (extremely popular type of blog) and you get ONE Blogger blog in the top 10 (number 7 in fact, near the BOTTOM). The others are all self-hosted WordPress or self-hosted Movable Type.

Contrary to what you might read, you don’t need to be a geek to use a self-hosted blog. Most of them have very simple step-by-step installation guides (WordPress has a “Famous 5 minute installation”) and there’s lots of support on the forums for people who aren’t coders or tech-savvy. Getting a self-hosted blog can be even more simple, depending on your hosting company. GoDaddy offers it for free, with one click.

If you’re still using Blogger (or any other free blog service), I’m sure you love it and are having a wonderful time with it, but it’s time to “grow up” if you’re looking to make any real progress or money from blogging. Plain. And. Simple.

Popularity: 16% [?]

We all know that sometimes keeping up with posting on a blog can get troublesome for bloggers. You’re tired, bored, fighting writer’s block, frustrated with the lack of commenters, or just flat out too busy. This is where developing an editorial calendar, much like the major newspapers and magazines do, can help.

I’m speaking from experience here, folks. I own several blogs that had been tremendously neglected for some time, but I didn’t really want to let them go just yet. I decided to hunker down and create an editorial calendar for each blog to schedule my posts out ahead of time, so that when I had the time/energy/desire to sit down and get some posting out of the way, I had a concrete plan so I could post up to months in advance if I wanted to!

Now, depending on your niche topic, this might be more difficult for some of you than others, but never fear, for there is always a way!

If your blog is a “newsy” type blog - where you spend the first part of your day, 5-7 days a week, scanning RSS feeds for barely-reported news, and then quickly write up a post to get on the list of the first few to “break” the story, then what you need to do is break your editorial calendar down into subtopics for certain days.

Let’s say you have a tech news blog, and you cover anything and everything technology related. Set up a schedule so that certain days cover certain aspects of technology and development.

Monday - New Products
Wednesday - Product Reviews
Friday - Company Profiles

Notice, there are 2-4 days missing in that calendar (depending on if you want to be a 5 post a week blogger or a 7 post a week blogger). This is where you can fill in with your feverishly researched breaking news stories. Since regularly updated content is essential to the success of every blog, wouldn’t it be better to have guaranteed posts for a few days, and then fill in with the “Oh my God I have to blog this!” type stuff on a less frequent basis? Yessir, I think so. Instead of having to do that RSS feed research/fever posting 5-7 days a week, you can now bring it down to 2-4 days a week, without having to worry about missing days of content!

Now, here’s another take on this, so let’s stick with the tech blog and try another type of editorial calendar:

Monday - iPod/Apple
Tuesday - PCs/Microsoft
Wednesday - gadgets/gear
Thursday - company profile
Friday - other product reviews/link post to “news”

In this editorial calendar, you’re set up with pretty much 5 days worth of posts that you can write in advance. Let’s face it, as a small-time blogger (no offense, that’s what we all are when we start and up until we “make it big”), it’s highly unlikely YOU are going to be in the first 5 or 10 to post something newsy. So why not save Fridays for a weekly link roundup of the top blogs that HAVE earned that status, which will not only provide you with several less stress-induced posts to write each week, but will also give your readers links out to people you feel are an authority. It’ll also likely get you attention from those authority bloggers, which can never be a bad thing!

The real benefit to a calendar like this, is let’s say that you’re sitting there really finding some good stuff to write about iPods. Rather than write one post now and wait until next week, then scour your bookmarks or do the research all over again, you can post date that second and third post for the following two Mondays! So now in one fell swoop, you’ve gotten three posts out of the way, and you don’t have to research iPods again for weeks!

I found one of the best ways to manage an editorial calendar when posting is to have an actual calendar in front of me, with lists on each day for what posts go on which blogs. Then when I write my posts, I can cross out the calendar entry after it’s been postdated, so I know I’ve already taken care of that day on that particular blog. Plus, the crossing out of things has always made me feel like I’ve really accomplished something, and it motivates me to do more so I can cross more off!

Now, all that said, there are other ways editorial calendars can help spur activity on your blog:

• Visitors know what to expect, and when. So they know you’ll have something of interest to them on a certain day, and they can be sure to read and comment.
• Readers are allowed the chance to be more loyal, because they get used to knowing that you’re going to have X amount of posts per week, rather than sporadic posting. Research shows that inconsistent posting can lose RSS subscribers. (Among other things…)
• In the event that you choose to have multiple authors or you want to hire ghost writers, you can delegate the schedule so that you know certain things will be covered on a regular basis by others. This allows YOU more time to market your blog and be more social (commenting and linking and all is also quite time consuming, though essential!)

What are your thoughts on editorial calendars? Are you using one, and if so, what’s your schedule?

Popularity: 40% [?]

The internet is full of spammers, liars, and cheats. It’s a fact.

Owning a blog can put your site out there to be “bombed and pillaged” if you’re not on top of things, and one of the ways to keep that from happening is to provide a clear, concise comment policy.

I’ve personally been in situations where I’ve seen people getting ripped apart in arguments under a blog post, and it kills me that the site owner would sit back and let it happen. However, that’s part of their comment policy - they don’t delete anything unless it’s clearly classified as “spam”. Usually that’s when a simple bot comes along and blasts your last 100 posts with a URL or some kind of mile-long list of links to sex sites or the like.

Other people refuse to tolerate the negative bashing and simply delete the posts like that with no exception. Some will only do this if it’s bashing another commenter, while others will do it if it’s bashing them.

What about “signatures”? When someone leaves a comment and then puts their name and a link to their site in it at the bottom, that’s a signature. I’ve seen people comment with a 3-line answer and then put a 5-line signature at the bottom, phone numbers and all!

Personally, when it comes to spam, it’s handled by my sites’ spam filters. Some slips through, and I have to moderate it, but for the most part, it’s already caught and I don’t have to deal with it.

When it comes to blatant attacks and bashing, of my readers or other commenters, it’s gone. Deleted. Outta there. You want to argue with me and something I said? Present a valid, calm argument and it could benefit everyone involved. Start name calling and such, and depending on the blog (as I have several), you could find yourself outed (nothing’s ever truly anonymous) and/or given a good lashing right back. On this site, I’d likely simply delete it, but on some of the others I have, I’ll make a mockery of the “criminal”.

As far as signatures go, I don’t have a huge problem with them if you’ve left a reasonably valid comment (rather than “Thanks for the info”) that adds something to the discussion, and if they’re not like the 5-liner signatures I mentioned above. The reason being that when you leave a comment on a blog, you almost always have the opportunity to put your site’s URL in so that the name you use links to the site. There’s no need for a second link in the comment, you know? In the event that happens, I’ll simply delete the signature and approve the comment. If it’s one of those “thanks” kinds of comments, I’ll let it go through if there’s no signature, otherwise it gets deleted. You can’t add something of value to the thread, you don’t deserve even the default link.

What’s your blog’s comment policy? Do you have it posted somewhere, or do you just play by ear?

Popularity: 69% [?]

I’m so super excited to announce the release of my friend Darren Rowse’s book! Okay, well I’m not announcing it, he did, but I’m bragging for him!

Here’s an excerpt from the book’s site about what’s included:

Unlike other books that are big on potential and theory, ProBlogger provides results based on the authors own experience of what really works through practical, tried and tested advice. Inside readers will learn:

* How Bloggers Make Money
* Direct Income Earning vs. Indirect Income Earning methods
* Why Niches are Important
* 20 Ingredients for a successful blog post
* Optimizing advertising
* Which advertising platforms work best
* Expert analysis of Technocrati’s Top Blogs - why they work

Pretty nifty, eh? Oh, and you can save 5% ($8.50) by pre-ordering ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income at Amazon.

Popularity: 80% [?]

Now, I’m not going to try to convince you that this would be a great opportunity for a business blog, because I still feel that business blogs should be hosted, designed, and maintained by the company/entity itself. However if you’ve been considering getting into personal blogging, and want to get a feel of the “blog culture” without spending too much (or any) money, you could try Thoughts.Com.

Thoughts.Com is a totally free blog community where users can not only write blog posts on any topic they choose, but find themselves instantly attached to a whole bunch of readers. Bloggers can post photos, videos, podcasts, rate other members’ posts, and once a year, Thoughts.Com gives away a vacation to 5 of their bloggers!

Another pretty cool feature of this blog community that I haven’t seen much in others is their forums. Pretty much every topic under the sun is covered in there, making this a real community venture outside the realm of normal blog commenting. Unlike other free blog communities, the forums aren’t strictly limited to site issues or questions. It’s a community forum, where you can find others with similar interests and have a chat.

The format is pretty simple, and it’s easy to find other blogs based on a simple tag cloud. Comments and ratings seem welcomed by pretty much all bloggers, and the ability to either blog anonymously or put it all out there is pretty nifty too.

Again, if you’re really serious about blogging and trying to make some money with your blog, this isn’t the route I’d recommend. But for something fun, and a pretty large (despite it’s new-ness) community, it could be a cool thing to check out.

Popularity: 100% [?]