The official announcement hasn’t been made yet, but there’s been some chatter that it’s uber important to upgrade to 2.1.2 if you’re currently using 2.1.1 - My guess would be it’s a security issue, so get to doing that upgrade!

You can download the latest version of WordPress 2.1.2 here. Upgrade and installation instructions can also be found on the WordPress site.

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Finally - someone did a little Q&A research on this topic! Darren over at Problogger asked his readers, “What makes you unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed?” and after over 100 responses, tallied everything up in a post titled, “34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog“.

The top three reasons?

1. Too many posts. (This is one of my personal pet peeves as well.) When you’re posting more than once or twice a day, you’re overloading your readers. I’ve unsubscribed from several sites’ feeds for this very reason. The whole point in using RSS feeds is so that you can get everything you want to get in one place, to cut time. When half my reader’s full of only one site - I get a little annoyed and wind up deleting them all without reading them. Eventually, I just unsub.
2. Infrequent posting. Wow, okay… so you either post too much or not enough and you’re going to lose readers. I tend to disagree with this one a little, only because if a user’s not posting, then my feed reader isn’t getting clogged by them, so why not keep on for a while? No, I’m not saying for six months or more… but there is real life beyond the computer screen (gasp!) and sometimes people just have things that grasp higher priority levels than others. It doesn’t mean they won’t come back, and it doesn’t mean they’re a “bad blogger”.

   My number two reason is a little different… I just can’t stand it when a “business blog” gets too personal, or a personal blog gets too whiny, boring, or repetitive. When a blog changes focus, be it positive or negative, it changes the whole reason I subscribed in the first place.

3. Partial excerpts feeds. Ah yes! The debate rolls on! But it’s quite clear that offering full feeds is likely to keep readers moreso than only partials, forcing the reader to click through to your site to get the whole story. (One person mentioned that they had to click through an ad to get to the story!) The bottom line is that people use feed readers to get through their news and stories all in one place. By forcing them to come to your site, you’re defeating the purpose of offering feeds at all.

   I totally agree with this one. Think about why you’re trying to get them to come to your site. Is it so that maybe they’ll click on your ads? Or is it because you want them to see what else you have to offer? Either way, with the advent of “feedvertising”, you can send ads for yourself or any other site you want with your feeds. Check out Text Link Ads, where you can use feedvertising to include your own ads, affiliate links, or allow others to buy links in your feeds.

So there you have it. If you’re doing any of these things - knock it off! Well, at least if you want to keep your feed readership (and possibly those people who have “bookmarked” your site).

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As a follow up to the post 6 Sites To Help Your Business Blogging Skills, here’s a list of sites that will help individuals who are looking to make a living as a solo blogger. There are literally thousands of great resources out there for this, but I’ve decided to list some of my current favorites here, just to give some shining examples of solo bloggers who blog about solo blogging.

Just so you know, the art of solo blogging for fame and profit relies mainly on ad revenue. But you need to know the art of solo blogging in and of itself, before you get to the fame and profit.

Do check out the other post for more blogging help once you’ve gotten to the point where you’re really ready to make blogging your business!

• Working At Home On The Internet - Joe’s got hundreds and hundreds of posts of fantastic information here! He’s a firm believer in “spreading the link love” and therefore also shares some equally great resources for bloggers who are seeking the joys of working from home. I discovered Joe and we’ve since become friends after a writing contest over at ProBlogger.
• Lorelle on WordPress - Regardless of whether or not your blog is WP based, Lorelle is an amazing contributer to the blogging community. She’s made many contributions to WP as a whole, and her writing is clear, understandable, and from the heart. She’s truly a “must read” for anyone who blogs!
• Six Figure Blogging - Six 1-hour audio recordings with extensive, annotated transcripts in PDF format featuring Andy Wibbels and Darren Rowse from ProBlogger (There he is again!) and the b5media Network. Main points of this course: How blogs make money (sometimes thousands of dollars!), suggestions on how to drive and convert blog traffic, and blogging as an occupation (as opposed to business blogging as a marketing tool), including details on blog networks and paid blogging.

I’ll add more to this in the future - if you know of any good “Starter’s Guide to Blogging for Dollars” type sites that should be included here, let us know in the comments!

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Many of my clients ask me about blogging.

“What the heck is blogging?”

“Should my business have a blog?”

“Why are blogs so popular?”

While I try to answer these based on fact and not so much on opinion (because my opinion sometimes sounds fanatical when it comes to the greatness of blogs), I also try to direct them to some sites that have helped me with my blogging adventures, especially once they decide to give it a shot. Here’s a list of some of my favorite (I’ve got them in my RSS reader so I don’t miss a beat) blog help sites. Please note, these are blogs that are ONLY about blogging, not about working at home as a blogger, or working at home in general. This list is meant mainly for businesses with existing web sites that might want to venture into blogging as an additional part of their current site. I’ll make another list soon for individuals, I promise!

These links will open in a new window, so you can come back to this list after bookmarking, because I know you’ll want to!

• ProBlogger - Darren Rowse is simply one of the best bloggers out there in my opinion. He not only teaches you the basics, but also keeps you posted on generating revenue through your blog via ads of all kinds. He has articles on getting and keeping a loyal readership (as he has thousands of his own), and really does a fantastic job of staying on top of the blogging industry. I can’t say enough good things about him, so just go check it out for yourself!
• Performancing - I really do love the tools available on this site. First and foremost is the blog editing tool for Firefox - you can write to any one of your numerous blogs right from your browser window, without having to go to the site, login, and click through to your “write post” page. Their metrics tools are pretty cool as well - it tracks as many sites at a time as you want, and lets you know how many hits you’re getting, exactly where they’re coming from, what people are searching for to find your site (and what page they land on), and even tracks your Google Ad clickthroughs. There’s also a really great forum and the creators are extremely receptive to feedback and support.
• CopyBlogger - Essentially one of the best blogs on how to write in a blog I’ve seen yet. Focuses on skill, technique, and ways to engage your readers simply by fine tuning the way you write your copy.
• Successful Blog - Liz Strauss takes successful blogging a little deeper by writing about not just writing, but thinking about the plan. “It’s more than a blog. It’s ideas.” is absolutely true of Liz’s site, and it makes a great place to expand your thinking once you feel you’ve got the basics down.
• Business Blog Top Sites - Check out what other business blogs are doing in terms of design, frequency of posts, topics, and more.
• Corporate Blogging Info - This site is no longer updated, but there are nearly two years of posts in the archive here that might be useful to aspiring corporate bloggers.

So there you have it. I could probably list a lot more, but this is good to get you started. Once you start clicking around, I’m sure you’ll find more too. Let me know in the comments if you think there are any that really should be listed here, and I might do a “Part II”.

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Okay, so the bane of every blogger’s existence is spam. Spam comments for drug, casino, and less-than-tasteful sites. How does one keep up with it all?

Enter Spam Karma (current version: 2.2) - the savior to all WordPress bloggers!

I use SK on all my sites where comments and pings are enabled. And I have yet to see a single spam comment get through. Dr. Dave keeps up with all the latest spammer techniques and is consistently releasing easy to upgrade updates to what is, in my opinion, the best overall spam blocker out there.

SK does a great job of manning the stations while allowing your site’s innocent commenters to proceed without hesitation - about 99.9% of the time. It depends on the rules you set in the Options, of course, but for the most part, your site visitors won’t even know what’s going on. But boy, will those bots know! (Okay, so they won’t, because they’re bots (ro-bots, automatically scripted to do you harm) but when their site doesn’t receive any hits from yours, well… heh eh eh!)

There are lots of anti-spam resources out there, and I’ll no doubt discuss them. But the bottom line is that I won’t ever install WordPress without installing Spam Karma as well. It’s just that dang good!

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