And this contest was the result!

So here is all the details you need to know:

That is how easy it is for you to help me win this little competition with Shannon. But seriously here are the ‘five w’s’ that will tell you all about whats going on!

• Who?
  Well that’s an easy one! This is a contest between two blogs, StandOutBlogger.com and InfectedByBugs.com.Head to Head.
• What?
  Ok you know it’s a challenge, but what exactly is the workings of the contest? Well simply put, it’s a 2 week contest starting today where we both have to try and increase our RSS feed count the most. (Shannon has almost 3 times the amount of subscribers as me so help a brother out and subscribe to StandOutBlogger :D)
• Where?
  Right here! Haha…where did you expect?
• When?
  Right now, til the 20th of October! 2 weeks to be exact.
• Why?
  Because we can! And because we both think we have what it takes to beat each other, and have put our money (well not literally) where our mouths are and the losing blogger has to write a scripted video blog written by the winner that will absolutely HUMILIATE the loser! Now this isn’t going to be a wussy humiliation video like the one Gyutae made Tyler read in their contest. Expect all the stops to come out when the winner is announced. (So subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!)

Well thats pretty much the extend of it all, and I really need your help so that I can win! So if you have visited here for the first time, or you come back everyday but just havnt subscribed I would really appreciate your vote of support!

Plus if you have any ideas on how I can totally inihilate Shannon in this contest, I am all ears

Well I got inspiration for this question this morning when I woke up and notices I had received an email and a comment(from two different bloggers) asking me the exact same question.

Are your comments broken, because mine never seem to show up!

Now the reason they never see them show up is because I individually approve each new comment because I want to make sure my blog is free from spite, bad language, or anthing of that nature. Now about 99.% of comments do get approved and honestly I’m not that slow at approving them - usually a couple hours.

That brings me to todays question:

Should bloggers auto approve comments or approve everyone before they are visible?

EXTRA STUFF:

1. I will probably not be approving comments til tomorrow now as I have my cousins wedding this afternoon - but I’ll be sure to take a heap of photos and I might even post some on hear and find a way to weave a blogging message through it.
2. I must say I am really impressed with my fellow bloggers! I have been emailing a whole lot of the top bloggers in the MMO and blog about blogging niche in regard to their input in a new project especially for you guys, and their response has not only been fast (I only sent them emails yesterday and most have already replied) but so far they have all been positive!

I have been harnessing the power of networking with other bloggers and I have managed to score myself a bit of a warm up for Blogging Idol, an soon to be published interview about me and my blog and a few creative blog promotion ideas.

So lets take a closer look at what you can expect from StandOutBlogger for the rest of October:

• 2 Week RSS Challenge With Shannon From InfectedByBugs.com
  After answering Shannons call for a challenge competitor, we have decided on a RSS contest. Launching with a bang on this coming monday, we will have two weeks each to gain the most RSS subscribers for our blogs. We don’t have money on the line. We don’t have prizes for the winner. What we have to fight for is something much bigger and much more important. PRIDE. You will have to wait til we launch on monday to find out what is going to happen at the end, but let me just say ‘PLEASE DONT LET IT BE ME!’

  This is going to be a fantastic warmup competition for me to try and re hone my skills after plateauing a bit ove the last few months, and let me tell you, the ideas are already flowing. I am going to have to kick it up a notch with Shannon having close to 3 times the subscribers as me, but Shannon had better watch out, cause this challenge is mine!

• I Am Going To Be Interviewed On MomsCashBlog.com
  A short while ago  was contacted by JJ from MomsCashBlog.com and asked if I would be willing to participate in an interview. I readily agreed for a couple of reason:
  1. JJ is a valued regular at my blog
  2. It gives me an opportunity to get StandOutBlogger.com seen by all her visitors!

  I have just received all the question and am looking forward to answering them. Just from the questions I can tell this interview will be quite a bit different to most blogger interviews and you wont want to miss it (so I’ll make sure I link back to it when it goes live!)

• The Blog Debate Concept!
  I am really excited about this one! Adam from Creadiv emailed me just the other day with a very interesting concept to help us both gain more visitors. After chatting with him on MSN for a bit about it I instantly jumped at the opportunity.

  The idea is that we select a topic and it is literally like a debate. I will take one side and Adam the other and we will both write 5-10 points on why we believe our side of the story is the right way for bloggers to go - of course linking to the other bloggers post! This is something I have never seen before and I am looking forward to seeing your response to it.

• My Most Popular Blog Post Ever
  I know thats a big call but I have already spend a couple of hours researching this and with a fair bit more to go I just know its going to be a hit with the social media websites! Yes it’s a list. Yes it’s blogging related. But for now, that is all you will know. You are going to love this one!
• Possible Teaking Of My Blog Design
  Although I love my design and it has served me well, especially with branding. I am always seeing new designs and learning new thing, and there are a few things with the design I would like to change. Like:
  • Removing the RSS, latest posts and Social Bookmarking buttons row.
    Looking at it, I don’t think it is that important and is just taking up space and making the design look a little bit cluttered. Of course I would move the rss info the the top of the side bar.
  • Look at better use of individual post pages
    Right now I have the image asking people to subscribe at the bottom of each post, but I think this whole section of the design could be redone to include relevant posts, RSS and social bookmarking buttons, and possible a little bit of advertising.
• I am looking for guest bloggers because I will be away for a week!
  With all these great things said, I am actually going on a road trip to Sydney for about a week from the 17th-24th of October with two friends of mine. We are mainly going for a one night event called ‘Passion World Tour’ but just chilling, shopping and site-seeing for the rest of the week (with shopping probably being done more than anything else :D)

  The Passion World Tour is a Christian even that will include Louie Giglio speaking, and two massive international names in Christian music, Chris Tomlin and David Crowder Band (I linked to videos instead of their websites because that would give you a quicker idea of what im going on about) I know it probably all doesnt interest you that much, but another thing I am super excited about doing is going to Hillsong Church and Youth when we are down in Sydney. Hillsong is a church produces some of the most sought after music and their youth band United play to crowds of 30,000 all over the world. Here is one of their songs called ‘Point Of Difference‘.

  Anyway, all that aside, I need some guest bloggers for while I’m away - so Shannon doesn’t get ahead of me in our challenge :D. So hit me up if you’re interested!

Well that is the extent of my October (Plus working!). It’s going to be full on, but it should be a whole heap of fun! If you have any thoughts or comments comment below!

Now I am not sure whether that had a lot to do with my stats going up, as I only gained a PR3 from a PR2, or whether a lot of blogs got hit hard by the recent PR update - either way I am very pleased! Hopefully this higher ranking will not only give me an increase in traffic from the list, but also continue to build my credibility and reputation as a blogger.

Did anyone elses positions change?

Everyone is looking for new readers for their blog! I don’t care if you’re getting 1 million unique visitors a day, you are still looking for ways increase your reach across the internet! So I am going to take a quick look at 10 easy ways that you can find new readers for your blog.

1. Comment Your Commenters
   Usually when a blogger comments on your post it is because it is of relevance to them and their blog. So why not stop on over at their blog also, return the favour and see if you can grab some of their readers. If you are in a similar niche, chances are you will gain quite a few new readers from this method!
   
2. Step Outside Your Niche
   I have found the goldmine for getting new readers for my blog was to step outside of my niche when commenting on blogs. Sure a lot of my readers are ‘MMO’ or ‘blog about blogging’ bloggers, but I also have a lot of general bloggers, mum bloggers and dad bloggers, who may not be as focused on making money but want to learn how to improve their blogging.

   What I did to find these blogs was to do A LOT of blog hopping, where I’d visit the commenter of one blog, then the commenter of that blog etc etc, and this chain would lead me to niche blogs that I would not normally visit! Become active outside of your niche!

3. Forums
   Forums are another tool for getting new readers I absolutely love! That is because it really does work. For me one blog alone is usually one of my highest referers each month - and I am not even as active their as I used to be.

   For me, being in the internet marketing/MMO/ blog about blogging niche, I focus on webmaster forums. The pick for me is Digital Point because the community is massive and they have a link to you latest blog post from each post you make on the forum! Another growing blog in my niche is BlogPremiere which also provides me with a nice amount of new traffic!
   

4. Google
   Search engines are great ways to increase your traffic because although it takes a while to happen, when it does, it is a constant flow that continues to work for you - even when you’re sleeping!

   The keys to generating search engine traffic from your blog posts is:

   • Optimise Your Posts For Keywords
   • Put Your Keywords In Titles
   • Talk About What Is Popular
   • Use Keyword Tools Like Micro Niche Finder

5. Social Bookmarking
   I must say this is something I tried to work out, but still havn’t. However saying that, I know a lot of bloggers that have had massive (and I mean massive) influxes of traffic from social bookmarking websites like DIGG and Stumble.
   
   If anyone has a post where they explain how to be successful in Social Bookmarking, feel free to link to it in a comment below!

6. Guest Blogging
   If you are looking to expand out of just commenting on blogs and want to show readers your quality of posting before they visit your blog, then guest posting is for you. There are a lot of bloggers that would love for you to make a guest post on their blog. In fact I probably get at least one email a week asking if I will do a guest post.

   A lot of bloggers are busy and would love a hand to lighten the posting load. This is your opportunity to show other bloggers readers why they need to be reading your blog also. One thing thought, do not right about you and your blog. Provide quality content that will benefit your host blog as well.

   A few blogs I have guest posted on are:

   • Tyler Cruz
   • Carl Ocab
   • Ian Fernando
   • MixedMarketArts
   • RetireAt21

7. Hold A Contest
   This has to be one of the most popular ways for bloggers to quickly increase their readers and thast because it works! I have run as well as been apart of my fair shar of competitions and each time I have seen a nice increase in my traffic stats, comments per post, and rss feed count.

   There are a lot of differnt types of contests so here are a few to get to you thinking:
   
   

   • Self Hosted Contest
     This is where the contest is for your blog only, and you offer prizes for things like:
     • Random Email Subsribers (To boost feed count)
     • Random Commenters (Boost traffic and comment counts)
     • Challenge/Word Game (To get readers coming back)
   • Multiple Blogger Contests
     This is where you are competing against other bloggers for a prize yourself, and usually involves you providing incentives and contests for your visitors. A couple of examples of this are:
     • The famous ‘John Chow vs Shoemoney’ contest
     • Tyler Cruz vs Winning The Web
     • Daily Blog Tips ‘Blogging Idol’
8. Give Away Something
   Giving something to your readers has to be one of the best ways of keeping them. I am sure you have seen all the blogs giving away a free product (usually an ebook) to every reader who subscribers to their blog.

   The reason they do this is because people love getting things for free and if the ebook is something that interests them then they will quickly give up their email address to get it! And most bloggers know that people are usually way to lazy to take the time to unsubscribe to things!

9. Submit Posts To Article Directories
   This is something I have been doing on and off since I started with internet marketing and bloggging about 18 months ago. All I can say is it works! I haev had one article have over 12,000 views and a couple more each with a few thousand view each. This is a great way to get free traffic for about 2 mintues work. I usually just submit to EzineArticles, but there are 100’s of other article directories if you want to spend the time to submit.

   Andrew Hanson wrote a great post about success in article marketing - where he tells us of a friend that has had over 200,000 article views! Read it here…

10. Entrecard
    Now I wouldn’t say that Entrecard is the best source of traffic, but any traffic is good traffic right? Now you could just go search for lists of blogs with the entrecard widget to drop, but why not be a bit more efficient and look for lists of blogs that promise to return the favour?

    There is a great one here to kick you off!

Well hopefully that should keep you all going for a while! Those are my 10 tips to get more readers, but I would love to know what you do. Especially if you have had success in social bookmarking!

Pretty much everyday I visit 45n5.com to check their MoneyLinks which are the latest blog posts of all the blogs on the Top100 list (which is now 351!). Today while I was checking I noticed that I had finally made my way into the Top100 - Number 98 (up from 103), but the funny thing is that while my stats have changed, the updated stats don’t seem to be showing in my ranking.

I recently got upgraded to a PR3 (from a 2), yet the Top100 list still shows a PR2 - So how did my ranking change?

So that’s a little bit weird,, but I still glad to have finally made it, and plan to be in the top 50 by the end of the year!

How are you guys going on the top100 List? I know a couple of my readers are placed higher than me (so watch out cause I’m chasing you down :D)

Well after the success of last sundays question, I am giving you all another chance to give me your thoughts on a topic! Sounds fun right?

Well I am sure the majority of us all stuggle with getting things done, as it never feels like their are enough hours in the day. So today we are going to look at the race against time! And what we can do to make sure we get all the things we plan done.

So I’ll throw it out there:

What do you do to win the race against time and get everything done you plan to do in your day?

Looking forward to hearing all your thoughts!

Here are 5 attributes that most bloggers have that annoys me!

1. They Think They Deserve To Be Popular
   Now don’t get me wrong. Everyone deserves the opportunity to be heard - that’s freedom of speech. But to think that you can just rock up, create a blog and the next day be getting 1,000’s of visitors is something that seems to be becoming all to common among new bloggers. They see the likes of Chow, Cow and Co and expect to get straight to their level, as they never saw the hard work that was put on by these ‘pro bloggers’ to get to where they are.

   To be successful at blogging you have to put in the hard work with quality posts and being active in your niche! AND YOU NEED TO BE CONSISTENT! Blogging success doesn’t come over night, but it will if you stick around long enough!
   
   

2. They Can’t Handle Criticism
   How many times have you seen a blogger lash out at one of the comments on their blog? Does anyone else get the feeling that a lot of bloggers cannot take constructive criticism? Now I’m not talking about personal attacks. I’m referring to people leaving comments that are their own opinions which just happen to be the opposite of those held by the blog author.

   Why is it so hard for us to understand that not everyone is going to agree with us? That is the beauty of such a diverse world! How boring would life be if everyone agreed about everything?

3. They Are Followers
   I’m not saying don’t change when you realise your blog is heading in the wrong direction. But I see a lot of bloggers totally changing who they are and how they blog just because a ‘pro blogger’ is doing or saying something.

   I would like to think that as bloggers we are the ones setting the pace, we are being creative and unique. Why are we so busy following the latest trend to make use of our freedom of speech. I remember when pretty much everyone would make a post about how much John Chow was earning the day after he released his monthly earnings. Now I know that it is a great encouragement to find out that this money is able to be made blogging, but does everyone need to stop writing quality posts to blog about how much someone is making?

   Be your own person. Blog about what you’re thinking. Take new territory! That is what blogging should be. Leave the rehashing for ezine articles!

4. They Don’t Harness The Power Of Networking
   Blogging is the perfect arena to really profit from networking. Why is it that so many bloggers don’t take ahold of the opportunity? In blogging their are so many ways for us to network and build our blogs together. To use each other as steps to building both each others blogs. We can:
   • Comment on other blogs
   • Link To Each Other In Our Posts
   • Use Social Bookmarking Tools
   • MSN
   • Help Other Bloggers Out With Problems
   • Suggest Ways For Each Other To Improve

   Think how much more successful all our blogs would be if we truly caught a hold of the power of networking?

5. They Give Up To Easily
   I was looking at Marks Top100 Bloggers list the other day and sure the top couple are still the same, but it seems like a whole heap have just disappeared and a new flood have come through. What happened to all the ones that left? I find that a lot of bloggers get flustered when they find out that blogging isn’t as easy as it seems. When they are posting everyday, commenting too.

   It could be cause it all gets too much. It could be they run out of ideas. Maybe they don’t see the vlaue since the money isn’t rolling in. Either way a lot of bloggers quit right before it seems like their blog is about to explode.

This blog post was one of those write before you think posts I recently talked about, and now looking back I can see that I am or have been guilty of all of these points at one stage.

What do you think? What is it about bloggers that drives you up the wall? I’m sure we all would love to hear your thoughts!

I don’t usually do this, but I was doing my regular rounds of blogs yesterday and when I hit TheUniversityKid.com I came across Jasons latest article called:

Step By Step Guide To Promote Your Own Webmaster Products

He shares a fantastic way for bloggers to make money selling their own products and it has really challenged me to look at ebook creation and list buildling.

I highly recommend you head over their and check it out, and I’ll have a full post ready for you tomorrow!

I mean when my friends ask me what a blog is I usually say something like:

• It’s like having a diary but online for everyone to read
• Just a place where I can write my random thoughts and see how many people are bored enough to read them.
• Something I do online to make money

Ok, maybe I carried them on a bit, but do you see where I am coming from? I mean what does BLOG stand for?

So I decided to do a bit of research on the topic. I mean if I want to call myself a blogger then I should know what one is right? So I went to google and entered

‘What does blog stand for?’

And it seems likes it’s not just me who wanted to know what it really meant! After seeing that alot of people were asking the question, I was quite confident that at least one of the search results would have had a decent answer. I WAS WRONG!

Every single answer to the question: ‘What does blog stand for?’ came back with the same result…

It is an abbreviation of Web Log (weB LOG for those of you who are a little slow :D)

I mean seriously I already knew that much, but the answers never seemed to take the question any deeper and the people asking the question seemed satisfied - but not me! I decided to keep researching to find myself a definition now for ‘Web Log’.  So as usual I went straight to the source of all knowledge. GOOGLE!

And from my search I found a great way to get multiple definitions of any word. In the Google search box type ‘Define:[insert word here]‘

Anyway using this method here are just a few was a blog (or web log) is defined:

is an online diary used by an author to share information on a particular subject at regular intervals. - www.broadband-guide.org.uk/jargon-buster.html

A web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. - sam.dev.uen.org/core/edtech/glossary.shtml

Also known as a blog and is normally a personal Web Page that allows the public to read a personal journal for an individual. As of late businesses and entrepreneurs have been using them to create paying web page businesses or market their wares and services - www.leadsales.net/adtermsexplained.htm

What I m reading from this is probably the same as a normal person could have worked out by just observing, but here are my thoughts on ‘What does Blog stand for?’ and more importantly ‘What is a blog?’

• Blogs were initially created for the sole purpose of providing an avenue for people to ‘journal’ their thoughts online.
• Initially created for individuals
• Meant to be updated regularly
• But now as humans always do, people have worked out how to make blogging into a form of business as well. Meaning that while some bloggers still blog to share their thoughts a new breed of bloggers are blogging with the intent of building a business.

Those are just my initial thoughts from those definitians and I am not saying that either blogging to journal your thoughts or blogging for money is wrong - I am just trying to define it!

Feel free to shoot my deductions out of the ground as you share what you think a blog is!